iHUiiifrtfi  tr!t,L<xi 


THE  PHILANTHROPIC   WORK 

OF 

JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


»  »       »    a  » 


■A.t/ce/j6y^  C^im^  ^xuu^tyyu,  -ISS^ 


<ftiM:u.u^  ^\^^-Z4re.J^^ 


THE  PHILANTHROPIC  WORK 


OF 


JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 


CONTAINING  A  BIOGKAPHICAL  SKETCH  OF    HER    LIFE 

TOGETHER   WITH  A   SELECTION  OF   HER  PUBLIC 

PAPERS  AND  PRIVATE  LETTERS 


COLLECTED  AND   ARRANGED  FOR  PUBLICATION 
BY 

WILLIAM  RHINELANDER  STEWART 

PRESIDENT    OF    THE    NEW   YORK    STATE 
BOARD   OF   CHARITIES 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1911 

^         All  rights  reserved 


)\^ 


z"^ 


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COPYBIOHT,   1911, 

By  the  MAOMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  igit. 


•     •       •       <ct 


J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  «fc  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Who  for  their  fellows  live  and  die 
They  the  immortals  are.    O  sigh 
Not  for  their  loss,  but  rather  praise 
The  God  that  gave  them  to  our  days. 

—  Gilder. 


241500 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  made  to  the  following  per- 
sons, and  others  who  have  supplied  information  or  offered 
suggestions  for  the  preparation  of  this  volume  : 

Miss  Sadie  American,  Mrs.  Francis  C.  Barlow,  Charles  C. 
Burlingham,  Miss  Ellen  Collins,  Mrs.  George  William  Cur- 
tis, Dr.  Annie  S.  Daniel,  Miss  Katherine  Bement  Davis, 
Miss  Jean  Disbrow,  Charles  S.  Fairchild,  Mrs.  Nicoll  Floyd, 
James  H.  Foster,  Richard  Watson  Gilder,^  Miss  Gertrude  E. 
Hall,  Robert  W.  Hebberd,  Miss  Sarah  Cooper  Hewitt,  Major 
Henry  L.  Higginson,  Dr.  Robert  W.  Hill,  Wellington  D. 
Ives,  Charles  D.  Kellogg,  Franklin  B.  Kirkbride,  William 
Pryor  Letchworth,^  Miss  Carlotta  Russell  Lowell,  George 
McAneny,  Miss  Anna  E.  H.  Meyer,  Robert  Shaw  Minturn, 
Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell,  Miss  Amelia  R.  Moore,  Mrs.  Fred- 
erick Nathan,  Miss  Clara  M.  Paquet,  Miss  L.  S.  W.  Perkins, 
Mrs.  William  B.  Rice,  Jacob  A.  Riis,  Mrs.  Henry  S.  Russell, 
Mrs.  William  H.  Schieffelin,  Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler, 
Dr.  Stephen  Smith,  Frank  S.  Witherbee,  James  Wood. 

1  Since  deceased. 


▼ii 


INTRODUCTION 

A  DOUBLE  purpose  has  impelled  the  undertaking  which 
this  volume  represents.  Seven  years'  association  with 
Mrs.  Lowell  on  the  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities 
early  convinced  me  of  the  originaUty  and  value,  both  of 
the  work  she  accompUshed  and  the  official  papers  which 
she  from  time  to  time  presented  to  the  Board,  and  this 
impression  was  afterwards  strengthened  by  evidences  of 
her  active  and  useful  work  in  other  fields  of  social  service. 
While  many  of  her  papers  are  preserved  in  the  records  of 
the  State  Board,  and  others  might  be  discovered  scattered 
in  the  reports  and  proceedings  of  the  different  charitable 
organizations  to  which  she  belonged,  not  a  few,  of  no  less 
interest  and  merit,  had  never  been  printed  and  were  in 
danger  of  being  lost.  The  rescue  from  oblivion  of  these 
fugitive  writings,  and  their  inclusion  with  a  selection  from 
those  already  pubUshed  elsewhere,  under  the  covers  of 
one  volume,  would,  it  seemed  manifest,  be  a  worthy  task. 

Not  long  after  Mrs.  Lowell's  death,  the  sentiments  ex- 
pressed above  were  explained  to  Miss  Lowell,  and  I  was 
commissioned  to  discover  some  literary  friend  of  her 
mother,  both  competent  and  wilUng  to  compile  such  a 
work.  The  search  proving  unsuccessful,  leave  was  given 
me  to  carry  out  this  plan,  which  was  undertaken  with 
a  justifiable  diffidence  born  of  inexperience  in  Uterary 

ix 


X  INTRODUCTION 

work,  but  with  the  resolution  to  spare  neither  time  nor 
pains  in  the  attempt  to  present  as  satisfactory  a  collection 
of  Mrs.  LowelFs  writings  and  outhne  view  of  her  varied 
philanthropic  work  as  might  be  expected  from  so  untried 
a  pen. 

Much  of  my  leisure  for  the  last  five  years  has  been  de- 
voted to  this  task,  which  has  proved  not  only  more  en- 
grossing, but  also  more  extensive  than  at  first  seemed 
probable.  More  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  Mrs. 
Lowell's  public  papers  and  five  hundred  of  her  letters 
were  assembled,  and  it  became  immediately  apparent  that 
if  the  publication  was  to  be  restricted  to  the  limits  of  one 
volume  of  reasonable  size,  —  as  seemed  desirable,  —  it 
would  be  necessary  to  exclude  all  long  and  technical 
papers,  and  such  as  might  be  readily  consulted  elsewhere, 
and  also  those  which  possessed  mainly  a  passing  interest. 
For  this  reason,  none  of  the  numerous  and  able  papers 
presented  to  the  State  Board  of  Charities  has  been  ad- 
mitted. It  would  be  difficult,  however,  to  overestimate 
the  importance  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  as  a  Commissioner 
of  the  Board,  and  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  give  in 
narrative  form  the  history  of  several  noteworthy  achieve- 
ments which  added  lustre  to  her  fame,  and  to  enrich  the 
story  by  occasional  quotations  from  her  reports  to  the 
Board,  and  the  insertion  of  some  of  her  letters.  This 
part  of  my  work  has  mainly  consisted  in  ''  stringing  things 
together,''  as  Mrs.  Lowell  herself  once  said  of  her  own 
work  in  compiling  a  book  she  published  on  ''  Public  Re- 
lief and  Private  Charity." 

The  endeavor  has  been  made  to  compress  introductions 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

and  explanations,  and  indeed  all  of  my  own  composition, 
in  order  to  leave  more  space  for  Mrs.  Lowell's  writings; 
and  this  plan  has  been  so  far  successful  that  nearly  two 
score  of  her  papers  and  addresses  are  included  in  the  fol- 
lowing pages.  More  than  half  of  these  relate  to  one  or  an- 
other of  three  subjects  of  general  and  continuing  interest, 
of  all  of  which  she  was  an  early  and  profound  student,  — 
Charity  Organization,  Labor  Questions,  and  Civil  Service 
Reform.  To  the  chapters  under  these  titles,  nearly  half 
this  volume  has  been  devoted. 

The  first  and  controlling  purpose  in  mind  during  the 
preparation  of  this  work  has  been  to  provide  a  new  hand- 
book of  reference  for  the  ever  growing  army  of  students 
of  social  subjects  in  our  schools  of  philanthropy,  colleges, 
and  settlements,  in  which  they  may  find  explained  in  her 
own  writings  the  sound  principles  which  underlay  all 
Mrs.  Lowell's  benevolent  work,  and  learn  something  at 
least  of  its  results.  The  story  of  her  life  is  full  of  inspira- 
tion, and  the  knowledge  it  affords  of  the  amazing  results 
attained  by  one  woman,  almost  empty-handed,  should 
encourage  many  to  follow  where  she  has  led  the  way. 

If  my  aim  to  contribute  a  helpful  volume  to  the  Htera- 
ture  of  philanthropy  has  not  failed,  the  other  purpose 
always  held  in  view  will  also  be  realized,  —  for  this  re- 
cord of  Mrs.  Lowell's  life  and  work  will  serve  to  perpetu- 
ate her  memory  as  one  of  the  most  useful  and  remarkable 
women  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

W.  R.  S. 

New  York,  October  12,  1910. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Acknowledgments vii 

Introduction ix 

CHAPTEB 

I.    Eaklt  Years 1 

n.    A  Young  Girl's  Wartime  Diary 10 

m.    Marriage 33 

IV.    The  Worker 48 

V.    Letters  to  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw  ....  62 

VI.    The  State  Charities  Aid  Association  ....  72 

County  Visiting  Committees 77 

VII.    The  State  Reformatory  for  Women    ....  87 

Vin.    State  Care  for  Feeble-minded  Women        .        .        .  115 
IX.    The  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of 

New  York 122 

Duties  of  Friendly  Visitors 142 

Sunday  School  Talk  to  Children 150 

The  Economic  and  Moral  Effects  of  Public  Outdoor  Relief  158 
Poverty  and  its  Relief :  the  Methods  Possible  in  the  City 

of  New  York 175 

Charity  Problems 189 

The  True  Aim  of  Charity  Organization  Societies      .        .  196 

The  Evils  of  Investigation  and  Relief        ....  207 

The  Uses  and  Dangers  of  Investigation     ....  217 

Emergency  Relief  Funds 223 

X.    Improved  Care  for  the  Insane 228 

XI.    Work  for  Dependent  Children 244 

A  Paper  Read  before  the  New  York  State  Association  of 

Teachers 257 

ChHdren 267 

Report  upon  the  Care  of  Dependent  Children    .        .        .  276 
Xn.    Special   Investigations    for    the    State    Board    of 

Charities             284 

xiii 


Xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XIII.  Work  to  Improve  the  Condition  of  the  Almshouses 

OF  THE  State  of  New  York         ....  294 

XIV.  The  Women's  Reformatories  at  Albion  and  Bed- 

ford   306 

XV.    Police  Matrons  for  New  York  City  ....  320 

XVI.    The  Consumers'  League         ......  334 

XVII.    Work  for  the  Emancipation  of  Labor      .        .        .  357 

Paper  read  to  the  Working  Women's  Society       .         .  372 

Industrial  Peace 380 

Workingmen's  Rights  in  Property  Created  by  Them  .  390 

Industrial  Conciliation 394 

The  Rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  and  Industrial  Con- 
ciliation        400 

The  Living  Wage 409 

XVIII.     The  Woman's  Municipal  League         .        .        .        .  416 
Whatcan  Young  Men  do  for  the  City?         .         .         .422 

Relation  of  Women  to  Good  Government    .        .        .  435 

XIX.    Tramps 446 

Letter  to  Commander  Booth  Tucker     .         .         .         .  446 
The  Influence  of  Cheap  Lodging  Houses  on  City  Pau- 
perism   453 

XX.    Miscellaneous  Papers 460 

Imprisonment  of  Witnesses 460 

The  Elmira  Reformatory 461 

Inspection  of  Private  Charities 462 

Moral  Deterioration  following  War       ....  466 

Booker  T.  Washington 471 

Model  Tenements  for  Widows  with  Small  Children    .  473 

XXI.    Work  for  Civil  Service  Reform 475 

The  Reform  of  the  Civil  Service  and  the  Spoils  System  483 

Civil  Service  Reform  and  Public  Charity     .         .         .  496 
The  Ethics  of  Civil  Service  Reform      .        .        .        .500 

Spain  and  Civil  Service  Reform 506 

A  Hard  Lesson  in  Reform 509 

Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform     .        .  512 

XXII.    Memorials 517 

Chronological  Bibliography  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  Writings    .  551 

Topical  Index 562 

Index 575 


ILLUSTEATIONS 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  by  Saint  Gaudens,  1899      .        .       Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The  Shaw  Homestead  on  Staten  Island 6 

Josephine  Shaw  and  Colonel  Lowell,  1863 38 

Col.  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  1863 42 

Mrs.  Lowell,  from  a  crayon  portrait  taken  in  1869    ....  48 

The  Home  near  the  Kill  van  KuU 50 

The  Houses  120  and  118  East  Thirtieth  Street 52 

Monument  to  Col.  Shaw  on  Boston  Common,  by  Saint  Gaudens      .  70 

George  William  Curtis 476 


CHAPTER   I 
Early  Years 

Heredity  was  kind  to  Josephine  Shaw,  who,  on  Decem- 
ber 16,  1843,  was  born  at  West  Roxbury,  Massachusetts, 
for  both  her  parents  belonged  to  New  England  famihes 
of  distinction  and  culture.  Her  father,  Francis  George 
Shaw,  was  of  the  fifth  generation  of  a  widely  known  and 
honorable  mercantile  family  of  Boston,  eldest  of  the  eleven 
children  of  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  a  respected  and  prosperous 
shipping  merchant,  whom  an  old  cynic  praised,  saying: 
''There  are  only  two  honest  men  in  all  Boston  —  Mr. 
Adams  and  Mr.  Shaw.''  He  was  a  great-nephew  of  Major 
Samuel  Shaw,  of  the  Revolutionary  Army,  afterward  ap- 
pointed by  President  Washington  to  serve  the  new  re- 
public as  its  first  diplomatic  representative  in  China,  and 
whose  ship,  the  Empress  of  Japan,  first  displayed  in  the 
Pacific  and  the  Far  East  the  flag  of  the  United  States. 

Francis  George  Shaw  was  a  man  of  distinguished  ap- 
pearance and  unusual  character.  An  original  thinker, 
philosopher,  hnguist,  and  philanthropist,  he  was  so  modest 
withal,  that  the  general  public  had  httle  opportunity  to 
penetrate  his  reserve.  Within  the  circle  of  his  family  and 
intimate  friends,  however,  he  discovered  a  nature  simple 
and  reUgious,  inspired  by  lofty  ideals,  patriotic  motives, 
and  the  love  of  humanity,  and  untainted  by  selfishness. 
While  still  a  young  man,  he  found  commercial  life  so  un- 

B  1 


•••a  >•;;;;,; -[iJOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

congenial  that  he  withdrew  from  business  and  retired  to 
a  farm  at  West  Roxbm-y,  content,  within  the  hmitations 
of  the  moderate  income  then  at  his  command,  to  devote 
his  days  to  the  care  of  his  wife  and  children,  and  the 
pm-suit  of  his  favorite  studies,  especially  such  as  related 
to  social  questions.  For  this  purpose,  the  choice  of  West 
Roxbury  as  his  residence  was  wisely  made,  as  the  socialistic 
community  of  Brook  Farm  had  recently  been  established 
there,  and  his  inquiries  were  stimulated  by  the  intellectual 
companionship  of  the  brilliant  group  of  colonists  who  there 
followed  the  precepts  of  Fourier,  among  whom  was  George 
William  Curtis,  —  afterwards  to  become  his  son-in-law. 
In  later  Hfe,  by  inheritance  from  his  father,  Mr.  Shaw  be- 
came possessed  of  a  comfortable  fortune,  which  he  received 
and  administered  with  an  earnest  feehng  of  stewardship. 
Voluntarily  avoiding  the  ownership  of  a  greater  estate 
which  once  seemed  within  his  grasp,  to  the  end  of  his  life 
he  gave  his  thoughts  and  means  to  the  spiritual  and 
physical  welfare  of  his  fellow-men,  and  to  those  especially 
whose  poverty,  ignorance,  or  servitude  seemed  to  him  the 
result  of  unfair  conditions  or  oppressive  laws.  The  hope 
held  out  in  Henry  George's  '' Progress  and  Poverty,''  that 
a  way  might  yet  be  found  to  restore  to  their  rights  the 
disinherited  of  civilization,  brought  comfort  to  his  declining 
years.  The  loss  of  his  only  son  during  the  civil  war 
he  bore  with  an  external  Spartan  calm,  and  few  realized 
the  depth  of  his  grief. 

Long  after  Mr.  Shaw's  death,  Joseph  H.  Choate  ^  paid 

1  At  the  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell  Memorial  Meeting,  United  Charities 
Building,  November  13,  1905. 


EARLY  YEARS  3 

this  tribute  to  his  memory:  ''He  was  a  man  among  ten 
thousand.  Born  to  wealth,  he  treated  his  wealth  very 
largely  as  a  trust  for  the  use  and  benefit  of  suffering  man- 
kind. To  every  good  cause  he  lent  his  sympathy,  his 
advocacy,  and  his  material  support,  —  and  yet  he  always 
exercised  a  wise  and  sound  discretion."  Endowed  by 
nature  with  many  similar  gifts,  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  son-in- 
law  were  inspired  by  the  same  motives,  and  united  in 
an  intimacy  which  led  Mr.  Curtis  thus  to  eulogize  him: 
''The  strength,  simpUcity,  and  sweetness  of  his  nature,  the 
lofty  sense  of  justice,  the  tranquil  and  complete  devotion 
to  duty,  the  large  and  hmnan  sympathy,  not  lost  in  vain 
philanthropic  feeling,  the  sound  and  steady  judgment, 
the  noble  independence  of  thought,  the  perfect  courage 
of  conviction,  the  unity  of  sympathy  with  understanding, 
.  .  .  and  a  character  without  a  flaw,  seemed  to  belong 
to  what  we  call  the  ideal  man."  The  qualities  exhibited 
b}^  her  father  and  thus  eloquently  described  descended 
to  his  daughter,  and  his  influence  upon  her  life  and  its 
results  cannot  be  overestimated. 

Josephine's  mother,  Sarah  Blake  Sturgis,  one  of  the 
twelve  children  of  Nathaniel  Russell  Sturgis,  a  Boston 
merchant,  in  her  twentieth  year  married  her  cousin, 
Francis  George  Shaw,  their  mothers  being  half  sisters, 
daughters  of  Samuel  Parkman,  one  of  the  leading  men  of 
Boston.  Her  ancestors  were  people  of  strong,  original, 
and  upright  character,  and  so  from  girlhood  she  was  con- 
trolled by  established  principles  and  an  exalted  sense  of 
duty.  Yet,  notwithstanding  her  unbending  strength,  the 
dominating  impression  received  from  companionship  with 


4  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mrs.  Shaw  was  that  of  a  woman  with  whose  good  breed- 
ing were  blended  sympathy,  cultivation,  and  charm. 
To  these  admirable  qualities,  she  added  the  graces  of 
generosity  and  humor;  her  deeds  of  kindness  were  con- 
stant, while  abounding  humor  sweetened  and  softened  all 
she  did.  Whatever  things  were  best  in  art,  hterature,  or 
music  instantly  appealed  to  her,  and  were  loved  from  the 
time  she  first  saw  or  heard  them ;  and  with  the  aid  of  a 
retentive  memory,  she  was  able  —  even  towards  the  close 
of  a  life  prolonged  to  her  eighty-seventh  year  —  to  recite 
whole  pages  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  her  favorite  poets. 
As  Josephine  survived  her  mother  only  two  years,  having 
always  lived  with  or  near  her,  Mrs.  Shaw's  constant  com- 
panionship and  example  must  also  have  proved  continually 
helpful  in  the  formation  of  her  daughter's  character  and 
in  her  later  career. 

The  possession  by  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Shaw  of  so  many 
attractive  qualities  of  heart  and  mind  drew  within  the 
familiar  circle  of  their  friends  many  interesting  and  not- 
able people;  among  these  were  Margaret  Fuller,  Lydia 
Maria  Child,  James  Russell  Lowell  and  his  first  wife, 
the  Storys,  Mrs.  Browning,  Francis  Parkman,  Agassiz, 
and  Beecher.  The  wartime  Massachusetts  people  of 
note  —  Governor  and  Mrs.  Andrew,  Charles  Sumner, 
Theodore  Winthrop,  and  others  —  were  household  friends. 
The  long  list  of  their  acquaintances  included  such  dis- 
tinguished and  different  people  as  Mme.  Mohl,  Fanny 
Kemble,  Charlotte  Cushman,  Thoreau,  Emerson,  Long- 
fellow, Thackeray,  Browning,  Charles  Kingsley,  Wendell 
Phillips,   WilHam   Lloyd   Garrison,   Ole  Bull,   Theodore 


EARLY  YEARS  5 

Thomas,  and  Henry  James,  Sr.  When  a  little  girl,  Mrs. 
Shaw  had  known  John  Adams,  and  as  a  young  woman, 
she  had  met  Andrew  Jackson  in  the  White  House,  —  "A 
rough  old  fellow,  wearing  carpet  slippers,"  she  used  to  say. 

When  Josephine  was  three  years  old,  Mr.  Shaw  brought 
his  family  from  West  Roxbury  to  Staten  Island,  New 
York,  where  for  three  years  they  occupied  a  rented 
house  near  Sailors^  Snug  Harbor. ^  This  change  of  resi- 
dence was  occasioned  by  the  failing  sight  of  Mrs.  Shaw, 
and  her  desire  to  be  near  a  specialist,  Dr.  Samuel  Elliott, 
imder  whose  treatment  she  entirely  recovered.  It  is 
interesting  now  to  reflect  that  but  for  this  physical  dis- 
ability of  her  mother,  Josephine  might  have  lived,  and 
worked,  and  died,  as  she  was  bom,  a  Massachusetts 
woman. 

In  1851,  Mr.  Shaw  took  his  family  abroad,  and  they 
remained  in  Europe  for  nearly  five  years.  These  were 
years  of  rapid  development  for  Josephine.  She  had  a 
marked  facility  for  the  acquisition  of  languages  and  be- 
came proficient  in  Italian,  French,  and  German.  She 
attended  school  in  Paris  for  several  months  during  their 
last  year  abroad.  Her  uncle,  Joseph  Coolidge  Shaw, 
from  whom  Josephine  derived  her  Christian  name,  was 
a  Roman  Catholic  priest,^  and  Josephine  and  her  sister 
Susannah,  during  a  winter  spent  in  Rome,  were  allowed 
to  attend  a  convent  school  at  which  they  were  the  only 

1  Sailors'  Snug  Harbor.  A  private  charitable  institution,  founded  in 
1807  under  the  will  of  Captain  Richard  Randall  for  aged  and  decrepit 
sailors,  at  New  Brighton,  Staten  Island. 

2  In  1851  he  entered  the  Jesuit  novitiate  at  Frederick,  Md.,  where 
he  died  before  completing  his  studies. 


6  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Protestants.  The  affection  which  Josephine  then  formed 
for  the  nuns  remained  with  her  through  life,  and  on  sub- 
sequent visits  to  Rome  as  a  woman,  she  returned  to  the 
convent  to  be  warmly  welcomed  by  them.  In  the  varied 
works  of  philanthropy  to  which  her  life  was  afterward 
devoted,  Mrs.  Lowell  must  have  been  aided  by  the  spirit 
of  religious  toleration,  which  she  thus  early  acquired. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Shaw  had  five  children,  —  Anna,  who 
afterward  married  George  William  Curtis  ;  Robert  Gould, 
who  was  killed  at  Fort  Wagner ;  Susannah,  later  Mrs. 
Robert  Bowne  Minturn;  Josephine;  and  Ellen,  who 
married  General  Francis  Channing  Barlow.  Josephine 
was  always  a  brilliant  child.  Her  mother,  writing  of  her 
when  she  was  ten  years  old,  said:  '^Effie  is  the  genius 
of  the  family.  She  can  cook,  cut  out  things,  trim  hats 
and  caps,  speak  French,  German,  and  Italian,  and  write 
poetry.'^  Within  her  own  home  and  to  her  intimates 
Josephine  was  always  known  by  the  diminutive  name 
used  by  her  mother  in  this  letter. 

In  1855,  Mr.  Shaw  brought  his  family  home,  and  after 
a  summer  spent  at  Newport,  they  settled  in  a  house  which 
he  built  on  Bard  Avenue  near  West  New  Brighton,  Staten 
Island.  The  marriage,  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  1856,  of 
Josephine's  sister  Anna  to  George  William  Curtis,  was  an 
event  which  exercised  a  marked  influence  on  her  future 
life,  for  Mr.  Curtis  became  for  many  years  a  member  of 
the  household,  and  she  had  the  inestimable  advantage 
of  close  companionship  with  that  scholarly  and  patriotic 
man  dm*ing  some  of  her  most  impressionable  years.  To 
her  Mr.  Curtis's  library  was  always  open,  even  though 


EARLY  YEARS  7 

he  might  be  there  reading  or  working.  And  this  was  true 
also  in  later  years  when  he  moved  into  a  house  of  his  own 
near  by.  While  hving  on  Staten  Island,  Josephine  went 
to  Miss  Gibson's  school  in  New  York.  In  her  seventeenth 
year  she  went  to  school  in  Boston,  and  the  winter  of  her 
eighteenth  year  was  also  spent  in  that  city. 

As  a  young  girl,  Josephine  was  pretty  and  charming 
and  fond  of  general  society.  This  was  before  the  days  of 
golf  and  tennis,  but  she  had  her  horse  and  rode  well. 
Croquet  was  the  only  lawn  game,  and  she  played  it  with 
skill.  The  earliest  recorded  indication  of  the  life  of  de- 
votion to  others,  which  was  afterwards  to  be  Mrs.  LowelFs, 
was  given  when  she  was  thirteen  years  old.  Near  her 
father's  home  on  Staten  Island  was  a  settlement  of  poor 
Irish  families.  She  became  interested  in  them  and  used 
to  have  the  mothers  and  children  come  to  spend  the  after- 
noon on  her  father's  lawn,  where  she  would  give  them  ice- 
cream and  cake  —  a  custom  which  she  continued  for 
many  years. 

The  fifties  were  years  of  preparation  for  the  great 
struggle  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union.  The  Shaws 
were  abolitionists,  and  the  atmosphere  of  their  home  was 
so  intensely  patriotic  that  their  children  naturally  grew 
up  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  for  public  affairs  and  the 
desire  to  serve  their  country.  Before  the  war  broke  out 
in  1861,  Robert  Gould  Shaw  had  enhsted  in  the  famous 
Seventh  Regiment  of  the  New  York  National  Guard. 
When  President  Lincoln  called  for  seventy-five  thousand 
men,  the  Seventh  volunteered,  and  on  the  19th  of  April, 
1861,  Shaw  marched  off  in  its  ranks  and  reached  Baltimore 


8  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

soon  after  the  Sixth  Massachusetts  had  passed  through 
that  city  on  its  way  to  the  defence  of  the  national  capitaL 
These  two  regiments  were  the  first  to  arrive  in  Wash- 
ington. Shaw's  Harvard  biographer  thus  describes  his 
personal  appearance  at  that  time:  ^^A  pale,  thoughtful- 
looking  young  man,  with  a  manner  so  quiet  as  to  seem 
almost  lazy,  —  such  was  Robert  Gould  Shaw  to  a  casual 
observer,  but  his  well-defined  nose,  firm,  clear-cut  mouth, 
and  the  steadfast  glance  of  the  peculiarly  colored  light 
gray  eye,  together  with  his  alert,  quick,  decided  step  as 
he  moved,  showed  that  beneath  his  quiet  exterior  lay  all 
the  qualities  that  belong  to  a  man  of  more  than  common 
character.''  Thirty-five  years  later,  the  New  York  Sev- 
enth went  to  Boston  to  take  part  in  the  dedicatory  cere- 
monies of  the  Shaw  Monument  on  Boston  Common. 

After  her  brother  had  left  for  the  war,  Josephine,  then 
in  her  eighteenth  year,  joined  the  Woman's  Central  As- 
sociation of  Relief  for  the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United 
States.  In  this,  the  earliest  organized  charitable  work 
of  her  life,  she  was  associated,  among  others,  with  Miss 
Ellen  Collins,  of  New  York  City,  her  friend  and  co-worker 
in  many  benevolent  movements ;  also,  with  Miss  Gertrude 
Stevens,  afterwards  Mrs.  W^illiam  B.  Rice,  Mrs.  Lowell's 
friend  and  colleague  in  the  State  Charities  Aid  Associa- 
tion and  other  philanthropic  enterprises.  Of  their  early 
patriotic  work,  Mrs.  Rice  gives  the  following  account : 

'^We  worked  together,  from  morning  until  night,  in 
the  office  of  the  Woman's  Central  Relief  Association. 
This  was  a  branch  of  the  Sanitary  Commission  covering 
several  states  and  having  its  headquarters  in  New  York 


\  EARLY  YEARS  9 

City.  This  branch  had  over  nineteen  hundred  contribut- 
ing societies  scattered  over  the  states  of  New  York,  New- 
Jersey,  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island. 

'^  We  girls  unpacked  and  repacked  the  boxes  of  clothing, 
special  goods,  &c.,  sent  for  the  soldiers,  wrote  letters,  and 
made  ourselves  generally  useful.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  greatly 
interested  in  the  work,  which  we  used  to  refer  to  familiarly 
as  the  'San.  Com.^  She  was  so  young,  —  I  think  it  must 
have  been  her  first  public  work,  and  she  gave  it  up  only 
a  few  days  before  she  was  married.  I  found  a  little  note 
from  her  among  some  old  papers  a  few  years  ago,  asking 
if  I  could  take  her  day  at  the  office  that  week  as  she  could 
not  come,  and  neither  could  her  sister.  That  was  the 
day  of  her  marriage  to  Colonel  Lowell,  October  31,  1863.^' 


CHAPTER  II 

A  Young  Girl^s  Wartime  Diary 

In  the  eventful  days  immediately  after  the  battle  of 
Bull  Run,  Josephine  Shaw,  then  a  young  girl  of  seventeen, 
began  a  diary,  the  only  personal  record  she  left  behind 
of  her  daily  life.  The  four  little  old-fashioned  copy- 
books in  cardboard  and  paper  covers,  containing  nearly 
three  hundred  pages  of  pencil  entries,  including  the  period 
from  July  23,  1861,  to  November  9,  1862,  are  full  of 
interest,  for  in  them  are  set  down  not  only  the  feelings 
and  opinions  of  the  sensitive  and  intelligent  writer,  at 
that  time  of  national  crisis,  but  also  those  of  the  patriotic 
and  cultivated  New  England  family  to  which  she  belonged. 

July  23d,  1861.  Yesterday  was  the  saddest  day  this 
country  has  ever  experienced.  In  the  morning  the  papers 
said  that  we  had  gained  a  great  victory  at  Bull's  Run, 
taken  three  batteries  and  were  pushing  on  to  Manassas 
Junction.  We  found  afterwards  that  these  accounts 
were  exaggerated,  and  that  the  action  at  Bull's  Run  was 
merely  the  beginning  of  a  battle,  which  appeared  to  be 
favorable  to  the  Federal  forces.  About  half  past  three, 
Anna  and  Mother  had  gone  to  drive  and  I  was  sitting 
in  Mother's  room,  when  Nellie  came  up  crying,  and  said, 
**Our  whole  army  has  been  cut  to  pieces  and  entirely 
routed."  ''Which  army?"  I  asked.  I  immediately 
thought  that  we  had  been  driven  from  Virginia  and  the 
three  divisions  of  our  army  completely  destroyed.  I  went 
down  to  ask  Anna,  but  she  could  tell  nothing  excepting 

10 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  11 

that  our  men  had  run  from  the  enemy  and  lost  everything. 
In  a  few  moments  Father,  George  and  Mother  (who  had 
met  them  and  walked  back  with  them)  came  in  and  we  all 
sat  on  the  piazza  in  a  most  unhappy  state  of  mind.  The 
report  was  that  a  panic  had  taken  possession  of  our  army 
as  they  were  attacking  the  batteries  at  Manassas  Junction 
and  they  had  all  run,  with  no  regard  to  anything  else  but 
saving  their  own  lives.  Our  loss  was  said  to  be  about  three 
thousand  and  that  of  the  enemy  very  severe  also.  Father 
had  brought  down  a  letter  from  Rob,  saying  they  (Patter- 
son's Column)  were  about  to  march  somewhere  from 
Charlestown,  but  we  have  heard  this  morning  that  Pat- 
terson was  expected  to  make  a  junction  with  McDowell 
and  would  have  saved  the  day  had  he  done  so.  As  we 
sat  all  together  on  the  piazza  feeling  very  miserable, 
George  didn't  enliven  us  much  by  saying,  ''The  next 
thing  they  will  do  will  be  to  march  on  Washington,  take 
possession  of  it,  and  then  Jeff  Davis  will  issue  his  con- 
ditions from  the  Capitol  and  offer  us  peace.''  After  talk- 
ing it  over  we  all  felt  better  and  prepared  to  hear  that  it 
wasn't  quite  so  bad  as  the  reports  said. 

In  the  evening  Mr.  Appleton  (a  neighbor)  came  in  to 
George's  and  told  us  that  Patterson's  forces  were  supposed 
to  be  engaged  at  Manassas.  We  didn't  tell  Mother, 
although  we  all  knew  it,  for  it  would  have  caused  her 
useless  anxiety.  Lou  Schuyler  (who  is  staying  here  with 
her  sister)  heard  of  the  report  on  the  boat  but  didn't 
speak  of  it.  In  the  evening  Sam  Curtis  and  I  went  to 
Mrs.  Oakey's  and  Mr.  Oakey  demonstrated  in  a  very 
scientific  manner  that  this  couldn't  possibly  be  true.  In 
spite  of  his  cheering  remarks,  we  all  felt  very  badly  and 
merely  hoped  we  might  hear  better  news  in  the  morning. 
Our  hopes  proved  true,  although  even  today  the  news  is 
so  humiHating  that  we  feel  as  if  we  couldn't  trust  our  own 


12  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

men  again.  They  ran  with  no  one  pursuing  !  The  enemy 
didn't  even  know  such  a  direful  rout  had  occurred.  In 
their  reports  they  say  only  that  they  have  gained  the 
battle,  but  with  fearful  loss  on  both  sides.  It  was  evi- 
dently the  battle  on  which  everything  depended  for  them. 
Their  four  best  generals,  Beauregard,  Johnston,  Davis 
and  Lee,  were  there  with  ninety  thousand  men,  while  our 
force  was  only  twenty-five  thousand.  I  can  conceive 
what  must  be  the  feelings  of  the  men  under  Patterson ; 
they  might  have  turned  the  fortune  of  the  battle  and  were 
doing  nothing !  Poor  fellows !  Our  men  ran  as  far  as 
Fairfax  Court  House  and  the  Rebels  took  possession  of  the 
territory  as  we  left  it.  McClellan  is  called  from  Western 
Virginia  and  we  shall  have  to  retake  by  slow  degrees  what 
we  have  lost  in  one  day.  This  morning  our  loss  was  said 
to  be  only  five  hundred,  but  what  are  we  to  believe  ? 

This  afternoon  all  the  most  humiliating  circumstances 
of  our  defeat  proved  to  be  false.  Our  men  behaved  with 
the  greatest  courage  and  bravery,  charging  and  carrying 
the  batteries  and  fighting  with  as  much  intrepidity  as  the 
most  veteran  troops  could  display,  until  the  force  of  the 
enemy  became  overpowering  by  the  junction  of  Johnston 
with  Beauregard.  Then,  and  not  until  then,  they  re- 
treated in  good  order.  Mr.  Russell,  of  the  London  Times, 
is  said  to  have  said  that  nowhere  in  the  Crimean  War 
had  he  seen  men  make  such  splendid  charges.  This 
morning  I  and  the  Oakeys  went  down  to  the  sewing  meet- 
ing and  worked  hard  until  three  o'clock,  when  we  came 
home  and  heard  the  joyful  tidings  that  our  men  were  not 
cowards.  The  false  reports  were  from  the  exaggerated 
statements  of  civilians  who  had  witnessed  the  battle  and 
been  very  much  frightened  themselves,  and  all  the  agony  of 
yesterday  was  occasioned  by  the  readiness  of  newspaper 
reporters  to  transmit  any  stirring  news  to  their  employers. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  13 

One  little  incident  showed  the  difference  of  feeling  be- 
tween today  and  yesterday.  A  few  days  ago  Mother 
bought  Frank  a  uniform  and  George  had  promised  to  buy 
him  a  knapsack  yesterday,  but  when  he  came  down  from 
town  he  said  to  Frank:  ^'My  dear  little  boy,  you  must 
forgive  me  this  time  for  when  I  got  to  New  York,  I  heard 
such  terrible  news  that  I  had  no  heart  to  buy  your  knap- 
sack/' This  afternoon  Frank  came  over  in  great  glee, 
with  knapsack  and  fez. 

I  know  a  great  many  men  in  the  army  who  are :  My 
brother,  and  first  cousin,  H.  S.  Russell,  in  Gordon's  Regi- 
ment (2d  Mass.  Vol.),  Capt.  Curtis,  Lieut.  Motley,  Lieut. 
Morse,  Capt.  Tucker,  Lieut.  Bangs,  Lieut.  Robson  in 
the  same  Regiment ;  Joe  and  Ned  Curtis,  the  former 
belonging  to  the  Ninth  Regiment,  N.  Y.,  the  latter,  a 
surgeon  in  the  Georgetown  Hospital.  My  cousin,  Harry 
Sturgis,  in  Raymond  Lee's  Mass.  Regiment.  My  uncle, 
WilHam  Greene,  Colonel  of  the  14th  Mass.;  Dr.  Elliott 
and  his  three  sons  of  the  Highland  Regiment;  Capt. 
Lowell  of  the  U.  S.  A.,  and  Theodore  Winthrop,  who  died 
for  his  country  at  Great  Bethel,  June  10th,  1861.  Also, 
Rufus  Delafield,  a  surgeon  U.  S.  A.  Twenty  brave  men, 
—  nineteen  living  and  one  dead.  —  O.  Wendell  Holmes, 
Caspar  Crowninshield. 

August  2d,  1861.  Today  I  went  up  to  the  Cooper 
Union  instead  of  Susie,  as  she  was  not  quite  well  and 
could  not  go.  Lou  Schuyler  and  Miss  Collins  were  there 
and  I  copied  lists  of  donations  for  the  papers,  while 
they  unpacked,  arranged  and  repacked  articles  for 
soldiers. 

August  3d.  I  stayed  at  home  all  day  and  gave  out  work 
to  twelve  women.  Fifteen  have  been  here  today.  More 
anecdotes  of  Bull  Run.  Arthur  Dexter  (the  husband 
of  one  of  the  Curtis  cousins)  is  captain  of  a  Rhode  Island 


14  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Company  and  in  marching  had  hurt  his  foot  very  badly  ; 
in  fact,  so  badly  that  he  could  not  bear  a  boot,  so  he  went 
into  action  with  one  boot  and  one  slipper  and  leaning  on 
a  cane,  which  he  did  not  throw  away  until  the  charging 
began.  That's  the  right  spirit.  Mr.  Dana  came  here 
this  evening  and  told  us  of  a  man  who  was  going  down  to 
Manassas  to  reconnoitre  as  the  men  came  back.  He  said 
they  came  on  pell-mell,  well  frightened  and  disordered, 
by  hundreds,  with  no  pretence  at  command  or  obedience, 
so  that  it  was  melancholy  to  see,  when  suddenly  turning 
a  corner  they  came  upon  a  whole  company,  marching 
quietly  up,  ranks  close  and  eyes  to  the  front,  with  the 
Captain  marching  in  front.  The  sight  was  really  sublime, 
in  the  midst  of  the  flight,  and  he  called  out  ^'What  com- 
pany?" but  the  only  words  he  heard  were,  '^  Steady,  my 
men,"  and  the  brave  fellows  passed  on  without  his  being 
able  to  identify  them.  Yesterday,  someone  told  me  the 
following:  In  the  battle  the  Captain  of  one  of  the  com- 
panies ran  away,  the  First  Lieutenant  fell  and  the  Second 
was  wounded,  of  course  leaving  the  men  without  officers, 
when  the  First  Sergeant  stepped  out  of  the  ranks  and  say- 
ing a  few  words  to  the  men,  led  them  on  !  Where  we  fail 
is  in  the  commissioned  officers.     The  men  are  splendid. 

August  7th.  Tomorrow  it  will  be  decided  whether 
Dan  Oakey  can  obtain  a  commission  in  de  Trobriand's 
Regiment  (55th).  If  he  goes,  I  have  promised  to  knit  him 
a  pair  of  stockings. 

August  9th.  It  is  just  a  month  since  Rob's  Regiment 
left  New  York,  and  Uncle  WiUiam's  went  today,  bound 
also  for  Harper's  Ferry.  Our  last  sight  of  Rob  was  from 
the  Flora;  he  was  standing  on  the  paddlebox  of  the 
Kill  Van  Kull  waving  his  handkerchief  to  us,  and  we  saw 
him  until  the  steamboat  rounded  the  point  between 
Snug  Harbor  and  Factoryville.    I  pray  God  that  the  next 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  15 

month  may  pass  as  safely  for  him  and  Harry.  Mother 
had  a  letter  from  Mr.  Olmsted,  taking  rather  a  gloomy 
view  of  the  state  of  affairs.  George,  also,  is  rather  de- 
pressed and  everybody  generally  wants  Lincoln  to  change 
his  Cabinet.  I  don't  see  the  use  of  being  depressed;  if 
Washington  had  been  depressed,  our  country  would  never 
have  been  born.  The  true  spirit  is,  ''If  new  difficulties 
arise,  we  must  put  forth  new  exertions  and  proportion  our 
efforts  to  the  exigencies  of  the  times."  And  we  should 
feel  as  our  dear  old  Uncle  Sam  ^  writes  in  a  letter  to  his 
father  :  ''  I  have  so  much  faith  in  the  justice  of  our  cause, 
and  am  so  sure  that  Providence,  in  its  own  good  time  will 
succeed  and  bless  it,  that  were  twelve  of  the  States  over- 
run by  our  cruel  invaders,  I  should  know  that  the  remain- 
ing one  would  not  only  save  herself,  but  also  work  out  the 
redemption  of  the  others."  Bravo,  Uncle  Sam  !  That's 
the  spirit  of  the  Revolution  and  the  spirit  we  need  now. 
For  my  own  part,  I  believe  (to  put  it  rather  strongly)  that 
if  we  had  no  soldiers  and  all  the  officers  were  drunkards, 
the  Cause,  by  its  own  force  of  right,  would  run  without 
help  from  anybody.  No  matter  if  everything  isn't  going 
on  just  right,  ''Our  cause  can't  fail,"  because  it's  God's 
cause  as  well  as  ours. 

August  15th.  Spent  the  whole  day  cutting  out  shirts 
at  home.  This  evening  we  hear  (through  the  Rebels) 
that  Lyon  has  been  killed  and  our  forces  defeated  in 
consequence  of  our  attempting  to  stand  the  attack 
of  21,000  men  with  5,000.  Bull  Run  over  again.  As 
the  news  comes  from  the  Secessionists,  it  is,  of  course, 
exaggerated  and  we  may  hope  that  it  is  only  a  check, 
if  it  be  a  reverse  at  all.  The  public  mind  appears  to 
be  in  a  very  desponding  state ;  all  the  news  from  every- 

*  Major  Samuel  Shaw,  who  was  on  General  Knox's  staff  in  the 
Revolution  and  first  United  States  Consul  to  China. 


16  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

where  is  uncomforting,  our  army  is  said  to  be  in  a  dreadful 
condition  and  every  responsible  person  at  Washington, 
from  Lincoln  down,  is  either  '^ a  knave  or  a  fool,''  as  a  letter 
from  the  Capital  to  Mr.  Gay  said  today.  George  wrote 
a  very  fine  letter  to  Mrs.  Gaskell  (24  pages)  and  read  it  to 
us  this  evening;  also  some  splendid  resolutions  he  has 
formed  for  the  committee  of  Richmond  County.  Eng- 
land and  France  are  to  have  a  consultation  as  to  the  course 
they  shall  pursue  in  regard  to  us,  and  Father  and  George 
say  that  if  they  say  we  must  absolutely  make  some  settle- 
ment, we  shall  of  course  do  so,  because  we  cannot  possibly 
fight  all  the  world.  Ah,  well !  We  shall  see.  These  are 
extraordinary  times  and  splendid  to  live  in.  This  war 
will  purify  the  country  of  some  of  its  extravagance  and 
selfishness,  even  if  we  are  stopped  midway.  It  can't  help 
doing  us  good ;  it  has  begun  to  do  us  good  already.  It  will 
make  us  young  ones  much  more  thoughtful  and  earnest, 
and  so  improve  the  country.  I  suppose  we  need  something 
every  few  years  to  teach  us  that  riches,  luxury  and  com- 
fort are  not  the  great  end  of  life,  and  this  will  surely  teach 
us  that  at  least.  Mother  had  a  nice  letter  from  Rob 
today.  He  still  enjoys  himself,  although  he  does  have 
to  sleep  on  the  bare  ground  in  a  little  tent  of  boughs  and 
has  hard  work  to  do.  He  says  a  Connecticut  Regiment 
came  there  a  few  days  ago,  and  on  their  arrival  the  men 
dispersed  and  got  drunk,  whereupon  one  of  the  officers 
was  not  ashamed  to  ask  Rob  to  send  a  guard  of  Gordon's 
men  to  make  them  behave,  which  he  did,  and  since  that 
time  they  have  had  chief  charge  of  the  Connecticutians, 
who  don't  mind  their  officers  in  the  least. 

August  17th.  Mr.  Field  and  the  Curtises  took  tea 
here.  Mr.  Gay^  was  to  have  come  but  for  some  reason 
didn't.     These  fearful  times  make  us  so  suspicious !    I 

1  Sidney  Howard  Gay,  managing  editor,  New  York  Tribune, 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  17 

know  that  we  all  go  to  bed  tonight  fearing  that  he  had 
bad  news  and  wanted  to  let  us  pass  a  quiet  night  and  not 
hear  it  until  tomorrow.  It  seems  always  as  though  we 
were  walking  over  mines,  which  may  at  any  moment  blow 
up  and  destroy  all  we  love  most. 

We  never  knew  before  how  much  we  loved  our  country. 
To  think  that  we  suffer  and  fear  all  this  for  her !  The 
Stars  and  Stripes  will  always  be  infinitely  dear  to  us  now 
after  we  have  sacrificed  so  much  to  them,  or  rather  to  the 
right  which  they  represent.  What  can  be  the  end  of  all 
this  misery  ?  Nothing  seems  to  be  done  by  us  and  every- 
thing is  done  by  the  Rebels.  Discontent  with  the  Ad- 
ministration is  growing  fast,  and  if  they  don't  do  some- 
thing, there  are  many  people  who  will  be  disgusted  with 
war  and  ask  for  peace.  '^How  long,  oh  Lord,  how  long  ?" 
It  is  true  what  Mrs.  Child  ^  says :  *'The  Lord  is  tedious, 
but  He's  sure.''  We  must  do  something  soon.  It's  im- 
possible that  this  inaction  should  continue  much  longer. 
This  suspense  is  horrible. 

August  19th.  Mrs.  Tweedy  kindly  asked  Susie,  Nellie 
and  me  to  spend  a  week  or  two  at  Newport  and  perhaps 
Nellie  and  I  shall  go.  I  think  we  should  enjoy  ourselves 
for  a  week. 

August  24th,  On  Thursday  (22d)  Nellie,  Howard  ^ 
and  I  left  New  York  at  12 :  15  and  coming  by  the  Shore 
Line  reached  Newport  at  9  p.m.  Yesterday  we  walked 
down  to  the  beach  in  the  morning  and  in  the  afternoon 
went  to  see  the  Constitution y  the  ship  where  the  Cadets 
live.  We  took  a  sailboat  and  when  we  had  gone  over  the 
ship,  visited  the  fort.  It  was  a  very  pleasant  trip  and 
with  pleasant  people.  Wherever  we  go  we  hear  pleasant 
things  of  Rob.     Yesterday  a  young  Mr.  Tuckerman  in- 

^  Lydia  Maria  Child,  author. 

2  WilUam  Howard  White,  a  cousin,  brought  up  in  the  family. 


18  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

quired  after  him,  saying:  '' Mother  will  be  so  pleased  to 
hear  something  of  Rob ;  we  can't  help  calling  him  Rob,  — 
you  know  everybody  does,  he's  such  a  general  favorite/' 
And  then  Minnie  Temple  says  that  Gus  King  (who  was 
in  Rob's  tent  in  Washington  in  April),  upon  seeing  his 
photo,  exclaimed,  ''Oh,  do  you  know  Rob  Thaw?  Why 
he'th  the  beth  fellow  I  ever  thaw  !"  It  is  so  pleasant  to 
hear  such  things  of  the  dear  fellow. 

August  26th.  There  is  not  much  news  to  be  had  in 
Newport,  and  the  minds  of  the  people  here  are  occupied 
with  other  things  to  the  exclusion  of  the  war  as  an  all 
pervading  thought. 

August  31  St.  Hurrah!  Hurrah!  Hurrah!  The  Tribune 
says  today  that  Fremont  has  declared  Missouri  to  be  un- 
der martial  law  and  granted  freedom  to  all  the  slaves.  I 
rather  think  Mother  feels  well  tonight ;  I  only  trust  that 
it's  true.  Uncle  William  went  on  tonight,  so  Nell  and  I 
wait  until  Tuesday  to  go  with  the  Wards.  This  afternoon 
we  went  on  board  the  Constitution  to  a  hop  and  danced 
with  the ''middies."  Oh  !  if  Fremont  only  has  freed  the 
slaves,  what  a  step  it  will  be.  Joy  !  Joy  !  Joy  !  Hurrah  ! 
Hurrah !    Hurrah ! 

September  1  st,  1 861 .  It  was  only  confiscation,  but  that's 
better  than  nothing. 

September  4th.  We  left  Newport  yesterday  at  11  o'clock 
A.M.  and  arrived  here  (Naushon)  ^  at  6  p.m.  Fremont's 
proclamation  is  of  great  importance  as  a  sentence  of  death 
is  passed  among  all  men  found  armed  against  the  United 
States  and  it  frees  all  the  negroes  belonging  to  the  Rebels. 
This  morning  we  had  a  bath  and  after  dinner  took  a  splendid 
ride.  Our  party  consisted  of  Misses  Webster,  Watson, 
Ward  and  Shaw,  and  Messrs.  Grey,  Ware  and  Winter. 

1  An  island  ofiE  Martha's  Vineyard,  where  John  M.  Forbes  had  his 
country  home. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  19 

September  8th.  Cousin  John  ^  read  a  sermon.  Lilly 
Ward  and  I  swam  across  Mary's  Lake,  with  the  occasional 
aid  of  Will  Forbes  ^  in  a  boat.  Tried  shooting  at  a  mark 
for  the  first  time  in  my  Ufe.  Hit  the  target  five  times  out 
of  six  at  100  yards.  Took  a  long  walk  and  ended  the  day 
by  a  row  in  the  harbor.     Two  boats  raced.     We  beat. 

September  16th.  Yesterday  there  was  a  letter  from  the 
President  to  Fremont  sa3dng  that  he  wished  him  to  modify 
his  proclamation  in  regard  to  slaves  and  that  he  expressed 
his  desire  publicly  at  the  request  of  Gen.  Fremont,  whom 
he  had  privately  informed  of  it  before.  Today  those 
nasty  papers  say  that  Fremont  will  resign.  I  wish  they 
might  all  be  cut  off  in  the  midst  of  their  career  and  not  be 
allowed  to  publish  a  single  issue  for  six  months. 

September  19th.  Spent  today  and  yesterday  in 
collecting  contributions  for  our  Society,  $110.00.  Mr. 
William  Winthrop  spent  the  evening  here  and  states 
it  as  his  opinion  that  the  war  is  to  last  three  years, 
while  Father  and  Uncle  Jim  think  that  it  will  be  over  in 
three,  or  at  most  six,  months.  May  they  prove  the  truer 
prophets. 

September  22d.  Yesterday  it  was  two  months  since 
the  Battle  of  Bull  Run  and  we  have  had  no  general 
action  yet.  .  .  .  Gen.  Fremont's  failing  appears  to  be  a 
desire  to  act  independently.  It  was  for  that  he  was 
court-martialled,  and  for  that  that  Lincoln  blamed  him 
in  issuing  his  proclamation.  It  is  a  very  natural  desire 
in  a  true  lover  of  his  country  to  take  the  way  he  thinks 
best  to  save  her,  but  a  subordinate  officer  should  obey 
the  orders  of  the  Commander-in-Chief. 

1  John  M.  Forbes,  a  Boston  merchant  doing  business  with  the  Bast, 
and  a  great  helper  of  the  Union  cause  in  Massachusetts. 

2  Son  of  John  M.  Forbes,  and  afterward  Lieutenant  Colonel  of  the 
2d  Mass.  Cavalry  of  which  Charles  Russell  Lowell  was  Colonel. 


20  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

September  25th,  Gen.  Fremont  is  to  be  allowed  by  the 
Administration  to  carry  out  his  own  plans  unmolested 
and  he  is  going  to  take  the  field  himself,  which  is  a 
good  move  as  his  reputation  is  at  stake.  Mother  had 
a  lovely  letter  from  Mrs.  Fremont,  telling  her,  among 
other  things,  to  ''Watch  my  Chief,"  and  speaking  of 
''Our  General."  It  is  really  delightful  to  see  a  woman 
so  much  in  love  with  her  husband. 

September  26th.  Today  was  the  National  Fast  and 
Mother  and  I  went  over  to  Brooklyn  to  hear  Mr.  Beecher, 
but  behold !  when  we  reached  the  Church  we  found  it 
shut  and  the  sexton  said  that  Mr.  Beecher  would  not 
preach  today,  as  he  had  said  all  he  had  to  say  on  the  state 
of  the  country,  and  didn^t  know  what  to  preach  about. 
His  daughter  Hattie  was  married  last  evening. 

After  the  disappointment,  "ma  chere  mere"  and  I 
betook  ourselves  to  Mr.  Chapin's  ^  where  we  heard  a 
splendid  sermon.  One  thing  he  said  particularly  pleased 
me.  Speaking  of  the  Nation,  he  said:  "God  Almighty 
doesn't  thresh  chaff ;  it's  wheat  he  takes  the  trouble  with." 
It  was  so  true  and  exactly  what  I  had  thought  myself 
that  the  Lord  would  not  give  us  so  much  suffering  if  it 
were  not  to  purify  us  in  the  end. 

September  29th.  Mother  and  Howard  went  to  hear 
Mr.  Beecher,  and  talking  of  Fremont,  etc.,  etc.,  he  told 
her  she  must  have  trust  in  God.  "But  I  do,"  she  an- 
swered. "What  good  does  it  do  you  ?"  he  asked.  "You 
trust  in  God  and  worry  all  the  time.  It's  just  as  if  I 
should  pay  my  passage  through  to  Albany  in  the  cars  and 
then  walk  up  all  the  way." 

October  3d,  1861.  Everything  goes  on  as  usual.  We 
have  no  battle  yet,  although  September  has  passed,  the 

1  Rev.  Edwin  Hubbell  Chapin,  1814-1880,  minister  of  Universalist 
Church,  Fifth  Avenue. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  21 

month  in  which  they  were  to  take  place.  The  weakness 
of  the  Rebels  is  shown,  I  should  think,  by  that  one  fact 
and  they  keep  having  doleful  accounts  of  the  condition 
of  their  army.  Uncle  William  Greene  says  that  ''Peace 
will  come  upon  us  like  a  river.''  Would  to  God  it 
might. 

October  17th,  Letter  to  Father  from  Rob.  They  have 
very  stormy  weather  and  the  tents  are  not  of  the  most 
comfortable  under  such  circumstances.  Cousin  Annie 
Greenough  wrote  to  Aunt  Katie  that  Dr.  Sargeant  (2d 
Mass.  Vol.  Reg.)  has  just  come  up  and  left  Rob  with  a  very 
bad  cough.  He  advised  him  to  ask  for  a  furlough,  but 
our  dear  soldier  would  not,  considering,  I  suppose,  that 
his  duty  required  his  presence,  and  I  like  it  much  better 
that  he  should  realize  the  responsibility  of  his  position. 

October  29th.  We  heard  today  various  things  to  make 
us  proud  of  Massachusetts  men.  A  man  who  saw  the 
fight  at  Balls  Bluff  says  that  whenever  one  of  their  number 
fell,  he  was  instantly  brought  within  the  Unes  by  some  of 
his  comrades  who  rushed  out  to  get  him.  The  men  fought 
all  the  way  to  the  line  and  retired  in  excellent  order.  Alice 
Forbes  writes  to  MolUe:  ''Wendell  Holmes  was  knocked 
over,  but,  jumping  up,  he  waved  his  sword  and  was  cheer- 
ing his  men  on  when  he  received  another  wound  which 
disabled  him.     Tell  his  friends  of  his  gallantry.'' 

November  2d,  1861.  Dear  old  Scott  has  resigned ! 
Touching  scene,  war-worn  veteran,  farewell  speech,  sur- 
render of  command,  etc.,  etc.  Mother  and  Father  feel 
rather  badly  tonight,  for  we  see  in  the  Post  (a  truthful 
paper,  the  only  one  we  believe)  that  a  messenger  was  sent 
out  about  a  week  ago  with  an  order  for  the  superseding 
of  Fremont  by  Hunter.  This,  added  to  a  violent  storm, 
suggestive  of  fleets  wrecked,  makes  us  rather  gloomy, 
though  to  speak  the  truth,  I  don't  see  why  Lincoln  should 


22  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

supersede  Fremont  when  he  is  in  the  field  pursuing  Price 
with  great  energy.  If  his  command  is  taken  from  him, 
Father  prophesies  that  he  will  be  our  next  President. 
Who  can  tell  ?  It  is  a  year  day  after  tomorrow  since  Old 
Uncle  Abe  was  elected,  and  he  has  not  made  himself 
despised  by  the  people  yet.  If  he  is  a  little  too  good- 
natured,  he  knows  how  to  hold  his  tongue,  —  one  of  the 
first  and  cardinal  virtues. 

November  12th,  ...  I  began  knitting  mittens  last 
Monday. 

November  Hth,    And  have  already  knit  four  pairs. 

November  30th.  All  has  been  quiet  for  the  last  fortnight, 
but  now  we  hear  reports  of  a  bombardment  of  Pensacola. 
They  come  through  the  Rebels  and  so  we  have  no  reasons 
for  believing  them,  and  great  ones  for  not  believing  them. 
We  must  wait  for  reliable  information. 

An  order  has  been  issued  by  Cameron  to  Gen.  Sher- 
man commanding  him  to  use  the  negroes  at  Beaufort  to 
pick  the  cotton  and  then  to  ship  it  to  New  York  to  be  sold 
on  account  of  the  Government.  Free  cotton,  I  rather 
think,  will  be  as  good  as  slave.  Who  one  short  year  ago 
would  have  imagined  that  we  should  have  shiploads  of 
cotton  picked  by  paid  negroes? 

December  4th,  1861.  The  latest,  best  and  most  ardently 
wished  for  Republican  triumph  has  been  achieved.  Fer- 
nando Wood  is  defeated  and  George  Opdyke  is  Mayor  of 
New  York.  Hurrah !  We  scarcely  hoped  for  such  de- 
lightful news.  A  Republican  Mayor  of  New  York ! 
The  idea  is  positively  an  almost  inconceivable  one. 

December  16th.  Today  is  my  birthday,  —  18  years. 
Sent  today  42  pairs  of  mittens  to  Rob. 

April  3d,  1862.  No  news  today  excepting  that  the  House 
and  Senate  have  both  passed  Lincoln's  bill  offering  to  buy 
the  slaves  from  the  border  States.    A  very  great  advance. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  23 

One  anecdote  of  President  Lincoln,  on  very  good  au- 
thority, I  must  repeat.  Mrs.  Andrew  being  introduced, 
he  immediately  began :  ^' Well,  Mrs.  Andrew,  how  do  the 
Governor  and  Butler  get  on?"  ^'You  probably  know 
more  about  it  than  I  do,  Mr.  Lincoln,"  was  the  reply. 
^^Well,"  answered  Abe,  ''the  more  I  hear  of  it  the  madder 
I  get  with  both  of  them,"  and  upon  her  endeavoring  to 
say  a  word  for  her  husband,  he  reassured  her  in  the  follow- 
ing words :  ''Oh,  you  know  I  never  get  fighting  mad  with 
anybody."  Mrs.  Andrew  told  the  story  to  Mr.  Gay  the 
day  it  occurred  and  Mr.  Gay  told  me,  so  it  came  direct. 
The  next  anecdote  Mr.  Gay  gives  on  his  own  authority, 
i.e.y  the  President  said  it  to  him.  He  was  speaking  of 
some  little  charge  brought  against  him  by  the  Tribune, 
and  after  saying  it  was  neither  just  nor  fair,  he  pro- 
ceeded: "But  I  don't  care  what  they  say  of  me.  I 
want  to  straighten  this  thing  out  and  then  I  don't  care 
what  they  do  with  me.  They  may  hang  me."  Dear  old 
fellow !  The  following  I  cannot  vouch  for,  although  a 
Unitarian  minister  told  it.  It  shows  Mr.  Lincoln's 
quickness  in  escaping  questions  and  conversations  which 
wouldn't  be  agreeable.  Bishop  Clarke  having  been  to 
see  him  on  business,  thought  he  would  consider  it 
peculiar  if  he  didn't  speak  of  religious  matters  before 
leaving,  so  he  began:  "Mr.  Lincoln,  you  have  a  heavy 
responsibihty.  I  hope  you  have  strength  to  bear  it." 
"Oh,  yes,"  interrupted  old  Abe.  "Mrs.  Lincoln  was 
just  saying  this  morning  that  I  was  growing  fatter  every 
day.  Why,  when  I  was  inaugurated  I  could  meet  my 
fingers  and  thumb  around  my  ankle,  but  I  noticed  today 
when  I  was  putting  on  my  stockings  that  I  couldn't  do 
it  now  by  an  inch."    Bishop  Clarke  left. 

April  9th,  Father  goes  to  Washington  tomorrow  on 
behalf  of  the  Contraband  Society,  to  try  and  persuade 


24  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  Government  to  take  the  matter  in  hand.  They  have 
so  much  to  do  that  it  will  be  a  difficult  matter  to  get  them 
to  do  anything.  Dr.  Hooper  ^  goes  with  him,  representing 
the  Boston  Society. 

April  12th,  A  year  ago  today  the  first  shot  was  fired 
at  Fort  Sumter.  One  year  of  war !  and  here  we  are 
with  700,000  men  under  arms,  great  battles  fought  and 
to  be  fought !  George  was  counting  over  this  evening, 
what  we  had  accomplished  this  year  in  Freedom's  cause, 
and  he  named  the  following  five  great  steps :  1st,  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  entered  into  a 
treaty  with  England  for  the  more  effectual  repression 
of  the  slave  trade.  2d,  This  year  has  witnessed  the 
first  capital  punishment  of  a  slave  trader.  3d,  Steps 
have  been  taken  for  facilitating  general  emancipation. 
4th,  Slavery  is  aboHshed  in  the  District  of  Columbia  (a 
thing  which  has  been  petitioned  for  since  Mother  was 
23  years  old  and  which  only  the  war  had  power  to  accom- 
plish). 5th,  Negroes  are  permitted  to  carry  mail  bags. 
Ten  common  years  might  have  effected  that,  not  to  speak 
of  what  makes  such  things  possible,  —  the  great  revulsion 
in  pubUc  feeling  on  the  questions  of  freedom  and  slavery. 
It  is  exactly  hke  a  revival  —  a  direct  work  of  God,  so 
wonderful  are  some  of  the  conversions. 

April  15th,  A  year  since  Lincoln's  Proclamation,  in 
which  he  says  that  the  object  of  the  75,000  men  was 
to  repossess  the  forts  of  the  United  States,  and  today  we 
hear  of  the  unconditional  surrender  of  Pulaski,  one  of 
the  strongest,  and  the  defense  of  Savannah.  Yorktown 
is  still  untaken  and  we  hear  nothing  of  the  Merrimac, 
except  reported  bursting  of  shells,  running  ashores,  etc., 
etc.,  none  of  which  are  probably  true.    I  heard  today 

1  R.  W.  Hooper,  a  physician  of  Boston,  who  took  great  interest  in 
the  war. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  25 

of  Wendell's  promotion  to  a  captaincy.  He  told  me  in 
Boston  that  he  only  wanted  to  be  captain  for  the  sake  of 
leading  the  men  in  battle,  and  now  he  will  soon  have  his 
wish.  Poor  Mother  is  very  low  spirited  and  of  course 
must  be,  for  Rob  is  in  continual  danger,  as  his  Regi- 
ment is  acting  as  skirmishers,  scouts,  etc.  She  was 
speaking  yesterday  of  not  being  able  to  do  anything 
''until  she  had  heard."  I  suppose  it  is  to  hear  that  Rob 
is  shot. 

April  18th.  Father  says  that  they  (the  Committee) 
had  various  interviews  with  the  President  and  were  very 
much  charmed  with  him.  He  was  much  perplexed  in 
regard  to  the  contrabands,  and  said  ''He  prayed  that  if  it 
were  possible  that  cup  might  pass  from  them."  He 
seemed  favorably  impressed  with  the  plan  they  proposed, 
but  the  main  object  they  had  in  view  (to  have  Mr.  Olmsted 
nominated  as  Military  Governor)  had  failed,  as  Mr.  Chase 
had  already  offered  the  place  to  someone  else.  They 
succeeded,  however,  in  causing  the  Administration  to  take 
a  more  active  interest  in  the  question. 

April  21st.  Letters  today  from  Rob  for  Mother  and 
me,  dated  11th  and  16th  instant.  He  seems  rather  blue, 
owing,  I  suppose,  to  his  doing  nothing,  and  the  feeling 
that  at  Corinth  and  Yorktown  laurels  may  be  won.  We 
hear  today  that  Banks  pushes  on  and  has  occupied  New 
Market.  I  hope  for  the  boys'  sake  that  they  may  be  in 
action  before  the  war  is  finished,  for  they  would  feel  dread- 
fully to  come  home  without  seeing  a  battle.  George  read 
his  new  lecture  this. eve,  "The  Way  of  Peace,"  and  it  is 
splendid. 

May  9th,  1862.  Today  Mother  received  a  note  from 
Dr.  Walser,  the  physician  of  the  Hospital  at  Quarantine, 
saying  that  250  wounded  and  sick  are  expected  to^ 
morrow  and  that  his  provisions  were  most  insufficient. 


26  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

so  we  have  been  very  busy  trying  to  get  some  new  things 
to  help  him.  The  letter  came  at  5  p.m.,  and  now  at 
10:30  A.M.,  we  have  already  got  SIOO.  to  pay  sewing 
women,  seven  pieces  of  cotton,  12  made  shirts,  22  cut  out, 
slippers,  etc.     This  is  doing  pretty  well,  I  think. 

May  16th.  Yesterday  a  letter  from  Rob  for  Father, 
saying  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  enter  the  regular  army 
and  asking  him  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  get  him  a  com- 
mission. I  should  be  very  sorry  if  I  didn't  know  that  Rob 
knows  what  he's  about  and  wouldn't  undertake  such  a  step 
without  thought.  He  says  he  thinks  the  war  is  to  be  a 
long  one. 

May  19th.  Rob  came  home  tonight.  In  the  first 
place,  when  Father  came  down  this  afternoon  he  brought 
a  letter  from  Rob,  dated  Washington,  where  he  said  he  was 
with  Copeland,^  who  was  trying  to  get  permission  to  raise 
a  regiment  and  wished  to  make  him  major.  Father  upon 
receipt  of  this  telegraphed  asking  how  long  he  was  to 
remain  in  Washington,  with  the  intention  of  going  on  to- 
night in  case  he  stayed  long  enough.  Apparently  in  an- 
swer to  this  came  a  telegram  from  Copeland:  '^  Lieut. 
R.  G.  Shaw's  leave  of  absence  extended  ten  days  by  order 
of  Major  General  Banks."  We  thought  then  that  he  had 
much  business  on  hand  and  might  possibly  get  home,  but 
otherwise  Nellie,  Clover  ^  and  I  were  going  on  with  Father. 
We  thought  of  it,  that  is.  After  tea  as  we  sat  in  the  parlor, 
a  man  came  up  on  to  the  piazza  and  we  said:  ''Who's 
that?"  The  door  opened  and  Rob  stood  there.  The 
confusion  was  extreme,  as  may  be  imagined,  but  we 
calmed  down  shortly. 

May  20th.  Yesterday  we  had  a  beautiful  and  touching 
proclamation  from  Lincoln,  rendering  General  Hunter's 

*  Morris  Copeland,  Quartermaster  2d  Mass.  Infantry. 

*  Miss  Hooper,  daughter  of  Dr.  Hooper. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  27 

order  freeing  the  slaves  of  North  CaroKna,  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia  null  and  void.  One  of  the  most  extraordinary 
things  that  has  happened  for  a  long  time  was  the  calmness 
with  which  that  order  was  received.  We  have  certainly 
advanced  twenty  years.  The  confidence  in  the  President 
was  shown  by  the  entire  acquiescence  in  everything  he  does. 
We  feel  that  he  is  earnest  and  means  to  do  right.  A 
unique  man.  Rob's  attempt  to  get  a  conunission  is  fruit- 
less.    Mr.  Sumner  told  him  it  is  impossible. 

May  22d.  Rob  started  to  go  back  today  at  7  a.m.  and 
now  his  visit  seems  almost  like  a  dream.  A  thing  I  had 
been  longing  for  for  eight  months  passed  so  quickly ! 
Well,  all  human  affairs  are  the  same,  the  unhappy  mo- 
ments are  long  and  the  happy  ones  short.  That's  all 
bosh,  though,  for  they  all  seem  short  to  me.  Rob  is  very 
much  dissatisfied  with  the  little  prospect  of  fighting  they 
seem  to  have  and  has  two  plans  on  hand  for  leaving  the 
regiment.  One  to  enlist  in  the  regular  cavalry,  if  he  can- 
not get  a  commission,  and  the  other  to  try  to  get  a  place 
on  Fremont's  staff.  Mr.  Gay  has  written  to  him  to  ask 
him,  and  I  have  little  doubt  of  his  saying  yes,  for  Mother's 
and  Father's  sakes. 

May  27th.  Rob  and  HaP  both  safe.  The  Boston 
Transcript  says:  '' Captain  Carey  telegraphs  for  publica- 
tion the  following  account  of  the  regiment :  Captain 
Mudge  and  Lieut.  Crowninshield  wounded  slightly; 
Major  Dwight  and  Dr.  Leland  probably  prisoners.  All 
the  other  officers  safe."  I  didn't  feel  yesterday  as  if  any 
misfortune  had  or  would  take  place,  so  the  news  didn't 
create  a  great  revulsion  in  my  feelings,  but  poor  Mother, 
who  had  been  really  waiting  to  see  Lieut.  R.  G.  Shaw 
killed,  was,  as  everyone  would  expect,  very  much  affected. 

May  29th.    First  letter  from  Rob   since  the  battle. 

*  Colonel  Henry  S.  Russell. 


28  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

'^  Quite  a  fight ''  he  calls  it.  A  bullet  struck  his  watch  and 
made  a  dent  in  it,  else  his  stomach  would  have  received 
it.  As  it  was,  his  thigh  was  bruised.  The  papers  give  an 
account  of  very  severe  fighting,  fatiguing  and  harassing. 
The  Second  behaved  very  well  and  covered  the  retreat. 
Dear  fellows ! 

June  3d,  1862.  Rob's  watch  came  today.  The  blow 
was  exactly  on  the  edge  and  a  quarter  of  an  inch  farther 
out  would  have  been  fatal.  The  hands  are  lost  and  it  is 
broken  apart. 

June  6th.  Letter  from  Rob  giving  a  description  of 
a  cavalry  charge  on  two  of  their  companies,  before  he 
reached  Winchester,  and  then  of  their  march  through 
Winchester.  Short  but  graphic,  and  Father  thinks  of 
having  it  printed  as  being  interesting.  All  the  account 
of  brave  deeds,  bayonet  charges,  calmly  receiving  the  fire 
of  the  enemy  and  withholding  their  own,  and  all  the 
stirring  accounts  of  courageous  men,  make  one  so  long 
to  be  with  them.  I  should  of  all  things  enjoy  a  forlorn 
hope  (I  think).  Well  put  in,  I  suppose,  but  still  I  really 
do  think  so,  for  I'm  not  an  atom  afraid  of  death  and 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  moment  would  be  sublime.  An 
immense  body  of  brave  men  is  grand  and  I  would  give 
anything  to  be  one  of  them.  I  cannot  express  what  a  sense 
of  admiration  and  delight  fills  my  soul  when  I  think  of  the 
noble  fellows  advancing,  retreating,  charging  and  dying, 
just  how,  when  and  where  they  are  ordered.  God  bless 
them !  Mother  says  she  hates  to  hear  me  talk  so,  but  I 
think  one  loses  sight  of  the  wounds  and  suffering,  both 
of  the  enemy  and  one's  own  force,  in  thinking  of  the  sub- 
lime whole,  the  grand  forward  movement  of  thousands  of 
men  marching  '4nto  the  jaws  of  death,"  calmly  and  coolly. 
God  bless  them !  I  say  again.  I  saw  today  the  report 
of  a  Lieutenant  in  the  First  Massachusetts  expelled  for 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S   WARTIME  DIARY  29 

cowardice  in  the  face  of  the  enemy.  Such  a  thing  I  can- 
not understand.  I  should  think  a  man  would  be  afraid 
to  be  a  coward  in  front  of  his  men,  all  looking  to  him  for 
example.  I  should  think  he'd  go  and  shoot  himself. 
I  remember  hearing  it  said  that  .  .  .  would  never  have 
been  taken  prisoner  if  he  had  behaved  well.  And  then, 
think  of  a  man,  with  consciousness  of  such  conduct,  dar- 
ing to  come  home  and  show  his  face  in  Boston !  Bah ! 
Perhaps  he  did  behave  well  after  all,  though. 

June  10th.  This  is  the  anniversary  of  Theodore  Win- 
throp's  death,  and  we've  just  got  used  to  missing  him. 
As  Mother  said  today,  ''It  doesn't  seem  a  year  since  he 
died,  but  it  seems  as  if  he  had  been  dead  years."  Think 
of  his  falling  with  Nellie's  and  my  photographs  in  his 
watch  !  I  can't  realize  it ;  a  man  who  will  be  known  in 
all  history  and  who  is  now  spoken  of  as  a  second  Sir 
Philip  Sidney. 

Jwie  25th,  Today  New  York  was  in  a  fever  and  stocks 
went  down,  down,  down,  because  Lincoln  and  General 
Pope  went  up  to  West  Point  by  special  train  last  night  to 
see  General  Scott,  who  it  was  reported  was  going  back  to 
Washington  with  them,  which  also  occasioned  intense 
excitement,  when,  behold !  he  went  as  far  as  Jersey  City 
and  there  remained  at  one  of  the  stations.  Lincoln  being 
called  upon  to  make  a  speech  came  upon  the  platform  and 
told  the  people  that  if  they  could  only  know  the  object 
of  his  visit,  they  would  find  it  much  less  important  than 
they  supposed,  but  that  he  couldn't  tell  them  what  it  was, 
because  Stanton  was  very  particular  about  the  press,  and 
he  didn't  know  what  would  happen  to  him  if  he  should 
''blab." 

July  2d,  1862.  McClellan,  quoting  old  Dr.  Beecher, 
might  have  said  to  me  last  night :  "Don't  return  thanks 
for  me ;  I'm  a  good  deal  hurt,"  for  instead  of  Richmond 


30  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

being  in  our  possession,  we  are  27  miles  from  it  and  our 
Fourth  will  be  a  very  sad  one.  Looking  at  it  from  a 
military  view,  as  I  did  at  first,  I  still  insist  it's  not  so 
very  bad,  but  Father  reminded  me  of  the  50,000  killed 
on  both  sides,  of  the  numberless  wounded  and  of  their 
friends  tonight,  and  the  thought  is  indeed  dreadful. 
Oh,  the  agony  of  hundreds  of  thousands  in  our  land 
at  this  hour !  God  help  them,  for  nothing  else  can.  At 
first  I  only  thought  of  the  whole  result  and  felt  as 
Father  says  he  does,  that  it  is  in  Our  Father's  hands  and 
if  it  is  good  for  us  to  suffer  we  must  bear  and  it  matters 
Httle  what  the  end  is.  So  we  grow  through  it,  but  oh ! 
the  thought  of  those  poor  suffering  boys  and  men,  in  the 
hands  of  the  enemy,  too,  and  the  cold  young  faces  turned 
up  to  the  beautiful  stars  !  It  is  enough  to  break  our  hearts. 
Every  new  battle  makes  one  feel  how  wicked,  wicked  it  is, 
the  desolate  homes  and  empty  hearts,  created  by  men's 
evil  deeds.  Young  boys  going  out  to  die  for  their  country 
wilUngly  and  joyfully  are  grateful  to  the  heart  and  mind, 
but  the  men  who  made  it  necessary  that  they  should  do 
so  are  base,  and  oh,  so  wicked ! 

July  4th.  Our  loss  this  morning  is  reported  at  15,000 
and  that  of  the  Rebels  at  40,000.  Jimmy  Lowell  was 
killed,^  and  his  mother  sees  it  for  the  first  time  this  morn- 
ing.  I  didn't  know  him  before  last  winter,  when  he  was 
introduced  to  me  at  the  Agassiz's  and  much  to  my  grati- 
fication asked  me  to  dance.  What  rendered  it  pleasanter 
was  that,  being  lame  from  his  wound,  he  hadn't  danced 
at  all  that  evening.  Poor  Mother!  I  won't  say  poor 
Son,  for  he  died  for  his  country  and  such  martyrs  are  not 
to  be  pitied. 

11 :30  P.M.    Just  come  home  from  Col.  Howe's  (Agent 
of  N.  E.  Regs.)  where,  in  spite  of  troublous  times,  we 
1  At  the  battle  of  Glendale,  Virginia,  June  30,  1862. 


A  YOUNG   GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  31 

went  to  see  the  fireworks.  There  was  a  soldier  there 
spending  the  night  who  had  been  wounded  and  Col. 
Howe  brought  him  down  because  he'd  heard  him  say: 
''Oh!  How  I  wish  I  could  be  in  the  country  today." 
I  talked  to  him  all  the  firework  time  and  he  told 
me  about  his  wound,  the  battle,  etc.  He  was  only 
17  years  old  when  he  enUsted  last  August  in  the 
Third  New  York  Reg.  and  had  been  at  Edisto  Island 
all  winter  until  the  attack  on  James  Island  in  which  he 
was  wounded  in  the  jaw,  or  rather  the  front  part  of  the 
lower  jaw.  Teeth  and  all  were  knocked  right  out  by 
a  bullet  passing  in  behind  under  the  tongue.  All  his  upper 
front  teeth  were  gone,  too,  and  one  would  have  supposed 
that  he  couldn't  talk,  but  he  managed  very  well  with  his 
face  plastered  up.  After  he  was  hit  he  walked  by  himself 
half  way  to  the  hospital  and  two  drummer  boys  helped 
him  the  rest  of  the  way.  When  he  got  there  the  pieces 
of  bone  hanging  out  were  cut  off.  The  fireworks  and  our 
brightness  seemed  so  incongruous  in  his  sight  and  in  the 
thought  of  thousands  suffering  tonight. 

July  8th.  Col.  Howe  told  us  of  one  poor  boy  shot 
through  the  head  who,  in  a  fit  of  delirium,  imagined  him- 
self a  prisoner  and  all  his  nurses  rebels,  and  so  railed  at 
and  abused  them,  ending  with:  ''I  don't  care  what  you 
do  with  me.  You  may  cut  me  in  pieces,  you  may  kill  me, 
but  I  will  hurrah  for  the  Stars  and  Stripes."  Dear  Boy  I 
Oh,  I  wish  I  were  old  enough  to  go  on  a  hospital  ship  or 
offer  my  services  as  nurse.  When  I  hear  of  these  poor 
fellows,  I  feel  so  dreadfully  mean  to  be  dressed  up  in 
white  muslin  and  enjoying  myself. 

July  13th.  I  feel  as  blue  as  blue  can  be  tonight. 
Everybody  seems  down  and  altogether  it's  doleful. 
Father  says  he  has  a  presentiment  that  some  great  blow 
is  coming  and  didn't  feel  quite  comfortable  this  morning 


32  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

when  I  mentioned  that  it  was  just  a  week  to  Bull 
Run. 

Nahant,  August  11th,  1862,  After  that  comparatively 
long  time  of  inaction  it  begins  again,  and  near  home  this 
time.  We  get  the  news  late  here,  and  we  were  at  the 
^'Sanitary"  when  Eugenia  Mifflin  told  of  a  battle  in  the 
Shenandoah  Valley,  in  which  she  said  Major  Savage  and 
Captain  Abbott  were  killed  and  Sam  Quincy  taken 
prisoner.  Rob^s  safe,  as  I  was  sure  from  the  beginning, 
for  being  a  Staff  Officer,  any  accident  would  have  been 
reported.  There  are  only  two  or  three  officers  untouched 
in  the  Second,  Richard  Carey,  Dan  Oakey  and  many 
others  being  among  the  wounded. 

August  12th.  This  has  been  a  sad  day  for  the  three 
houses  that  stand  on  the  Nahant  shore,  with  the  moon 
looking  so  calmly  down  on  them,  the  moon  who  knew  all 
Saturday  night  and  yet  wouldn't  tell.  Richard  Carey 
is  dead  and  his  poor  young  wife  has  been  crying  bitterly 
all  the  afternoon,  left  with  her  one  little  girl  to  whom  she 
has  taught  her  father's  name  and  kept  him  always  in  her 
mind.  She  had  her  trunk  packed  and  was  much  excited 
this  morning,  expecting  to  go  soon  to  nurse  him,  when 
came  a  telegram  to  her  Father  from  Col.  Andrews, 
saying:  ^^ Captains  Carey,  Abbott,  Williams  and  Good- 
win, and  Lieut.  Perkins  were  found  dead  on  the  field  of 
battle.     Send  your  son  on  for  their  bodies."  ^ 

August  29th.  After  thirteen  months'  hard  fighting, 
pouring  out  of  blood  and  money,  and  all  alternations  from 
hope  to  fear,  from  fear  to  hope,  here  we  are  back  at  Bull 
Run  and  Manassas  Gap  again,  with  the  Rebels  within 
twelve  miles  of  Washington.  We  hear  nothing  definitely, 
only  contradictory  reports  of  attacks,  defeats,  retreats, 
repulses,  etc.,  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other, 

'  This  fight  was  at  Cedar  Mountain. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  33 

but  on  the  whole  things  look  black  enough  for  us.  Soon 
we  may  expect  an  Emancipation  Proclamation.    (I  hope.) 

Naushon,  September  5ih,  1862.  It  doesn't  seem  very- 
pleasant,  after  eighteen  months  of  anxiety,  loss  and  sorrow, 
to  be  back  in  the  forts  around  Washington  with  the  Rebel 
Army  besieging  us,  but  such  is  the  case.  There  have  been 
sundry  battles,  skirmishes,  etc.,  and  that's  the  result,  — 
we've  got  into  such  a  custom  of  masterly  retreat,  that  we 
don't  know  how  to  advance.  Of  course,  all  our  friends  are 
constantly  in  danger  now,  because  the  army  is  concentrated 
in  front  of  Washington,  and  besides  that,  things  look  dark 
enough,  for  the  Rebels  are  very  energetic. 

September  8th.  The  Rebels  are  in  Frederick,  James- 
town and  Poolesville.  There's  no  hope  of  our  cutting 
them  off  because  they  never  go  anywhere  without  leaving 
means  of  retreat,  and  we  are  so  slow  we  never  catch  any- 
body. 

September  9th.  Nothing  looks  bright  and  cousin  John 
who  went  up  yesterday  and  returned  today,  said  all 
Boston  is  as  ^^blue  as  indigo."  The  enemy  has  been 
reinforced  and  now  they  say  they  intend  to  march  on 
Philadelphia  and  New  York,  though  I  think  that's  all 
talk,  for  how  can  they  get  North  if  we  couldn't  get 
South? 

September  20th.  On  the  25th  of  the  month  a  procla- 
mation is  due  from  Mr.  Lincoln  and  everyone  looks  for 
emancipation.  If  he  issues  such  an  edict  of  course  the 
pro-slavery  generals  must  either  resign  or  fight  for  freedom 
with  a  will,  because  if  slavery  is  extinct,  not  to  be  revived 
under  any  circumstances,  all  their  hopes  of  preserving 
it  are  past  and  they  will  be  tired  of  shilly-shally  when 
there's  no  object  to  be  gained  by  it.  Oh,  that  the  Lord 
would  only  put  it  into  Lincoln's  head  to  do  something 
strong  and  decided  !    We  must  ride  this  time  through. 


34  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

September  21st.  Wilder  Dwight  ^  died  of  his  wounds 
the  other  day  in  a  hospital  at  Boonesboro.  One  after  the 
other  we  hear  of  our  friends  faUing  off  and  still  our  dearest 
aren^t  touched.  I  wonder  why  ?  Col.  Dwight  will  be  a 
dreadful  loss  to  the  Regiment  and  to  his  Mother,  who 
adored  him,  but  he  himself  (as  I  have  just  seen  in  a  letter 
from  his  mother  to  Mr.  Ward)  was  ready  to  go.  Know- 
ing that  he  is  gone  and  that  I  shall  never  see  him  again,  the 
only  day  of  our  acquaintance  dwells  pleasantly  in  mind. 
He  introduced  himself  to  me  in  the  coach  at  Nahant  one 
day  this  summer  and  we  had  a  very  pleasant  talk  about 
the  Regiment,  the  war,  etc.,  and  his  pride  in  the  former 
was  good  to  see.  After  leaving  him  in  the  coach,  we  met 
again  at  the  Sanitary  and  he  walked  home  with  me,  bid- 
ding me  goodbye  in  these  words :  ''As,  if  the  worst  comes 
to  the  worst,  this  is  the  last  walk  I  shall  ever  take  with 
you,  goodbye,'^  and  then  we  shook  hands  and  he  went 
gaily  off  across  the  fields.  In  the  afternoon  he  came  to 
Aunt  Mary^s  ^  and  gave  us  an  account  of  how  he  managed 
to  get  paroled  when  he  was  taken  prisoner,  and  was  in 
very  good  spirits,  ''Ridiculously  good  spirits"  he  said  I 
thought  them.  I  shall  always  remember  him  pleasantly, 
he  was  so  bright  and  cheerful  and  so  brave  and  good  an 
officer.  Heaven  rest  his  soul !  I  can  see  him  now  as 
he  stood  saying  a  few  last  words  in  the  little  parlor  at 
Nahant  and,  nodding  brightly  to  me,  went  out  on  the 
piazza  and  so  out  of  my  sight  forever.  Of  Bob  he  seemed 
very  fond  and  that  was  enough  to  open  my  heart  to  him, 
even  if  he  hadn't  been  so  pleasant  himself. 

September  22d,  1862.  God  bless  Abraham  Lincoln.  He 
has  issued  a  proclamation  emancipating  all  slaves  on  the 

»  Wilder  Dwight,  Major  in  the  2d  Mass.  Infantry,  mortally  wounded 
at  Antietam. 

*  Mary  Sturgis,  wife  of  Robert  Shaw. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  35 

1st  of  January,  1863,  in  any  State  then  in  rebellion  against 
the  Government.  Father  and  George  think  it's  splendid 
and  believe  fully  in  its  wisdom  and  effects,  but  Mother 
fears  it  won't  be  as  well  as  if  he  had  emancipated  on  the 
spot,  although  of  course  she  rejoices  in  the  step.  Howard 
went  for  the  papers  this  morning  and  proclaimed  the  news 
aloud  as  he  appeared,  thereby  upsetting  the  equilibrium 
of  the  family.    Old  Abe  is  wise  and  I  guess  this  will  work. 

October  25th,  1862.  Another  battle  before  the  month 
is  up.  Oh  !  we  are  indeed  being  crushed  and  chastened  ! 
It  is  a  great  comfort  in  these  days  when  (in  New  York 
at  least)  the  people  seem  trifling  and  uncertain,  to  hear 
such  good,  strong  confidence  expressed  as  Mr.  Henry 
James  ^  said  he  felt  in  the  people's  '^coming  to  self- 
consciousness,"  as  he  called  it.  When  I  asked  him  if  he 
thought  it  would  take  long  to  make  them  feel  that  they 
were  the  one  and  only  power,  and  that  they  must  save 
their  native  land,  he  said :  ^'No,  perhaps  a  day  might  do 
it.  Some  manly  act  on  the  part  of  a  leader  might  crys- 
tallize the  men  near  him."  Everything  looks  dark  and 
imcertain  ahead,  except  the  pure  faith  in  God  and  our- 
selves. However,  it  isn't  well  to  be  down-hearted  in 
view  of  the  proclamation,  —  that  must  work.  I  was  told 
yesterday  by  Lou  Schuyler  that  the  negroes  in  Georgia 
had  quietly  refused  to  work,  sitting  calmly  with  no  idea 
of  insurrection,  but  simply  immovable.  In  Louisiana 
(as  a  lady  told  Mother  who  came  from  there)  there  is  no 
more  slavery,  and  with  such  facts  before  us  how  can  we 
say  nothing  has  been  accomplished? 

Yesterday  at  the  theatre  it  didn't  sound  well  when 
Richeheu^  said:  ''Take  away  the  sword,"  etc.,  to  hear 
loud  applause,  but  we  comforted  ourselves  with  the  re- 

^  The  elder  of  that  name. 

*  Played  at  that  time  by  Edwin  Booth. 


36  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

flection  that  it  was  New  York  and  only  the  upper  gallery 
at  that.  I  suppose  waiting  is  wholesome  and  trust  that 
it  is  as  Mr.  James  said,  that  ^^When  the  people  do  wake 
up  and  know  themselves,  we  shall  have  blessed  happy 
peace  forever.^'  We,  as  a  Nation,  are  learning  splendid 
lessons  of  heroism  and  fortitude  through  it  that  nothing 
else  could  teach.  All  our  young  men  who  take  their  lives 
in  their  hands  and  go  out  and  battle  for  the  right  grow 
noble  and  grand  in  the  act,  and  when  they  come  back 
(perhaps  only  half  of  those  who  went)  I  hope  they  will 
find  that  the  women  have  grown  with  them  in  the  long 
hours  of  agony.  Mr.  James  brought  Nellie  and  me  today 
two  photographs  of  Wilkie,^  who  had  gone  off  in  the  44th 
as  Sergeant,  and  on  the  back  was  somebody's  or  some- 
thing's escutcheon  with  the  motto,  ^'Vincere  vel  mori." 
It  seemed  a  very  fitting  one  for  a  young  soldier  going  forth 
in  all  the  ardor  of  a  first  campaign.  Dear  boys !  How 
noble  they  are,  and  yet  how  can  they  help  being  noble? 
I  have  longed  so  to  go  myself  that  it  seemed  unbearable, 
and  Emmie  Russell  ^  wrote  me  from  Florence  that  it 
always  made  her  cry  to  see  soldiers,  partly  for  thinking 
of  our  army,  and  partly  for  chagrin  that  she  was  not  a  man 
to  go  too.  We  can  work  though  if  we  can't  enlist,  and 
we  do.  It  is  very  pleasant  to  see  how  well  the  girls  and 
women  do  work  everywhere,  sewing  meetings,  sanitary 
hospitals  and  all.  Lou  Schuyler  told  me  at  the  Sanitary 
yesterday  that  there  were  150,000  sick  and  wounded  now 
in  the  different  hospitals  to  be  cared  for !  and  I  suppose, 
poor  fellows,  they  are  cold  and  tired  and  miserable,  even 
after  all  that's  been  done  for  them !  God  help  us  all. 

October  29th.     Rob  is  home  again  for  tomorrow.     That 
dear  General  Gordon,  feeling  that  he  ought  to  be  at  home 

1  Wilkie  James,  brother  of  Professor  William  James. 

2  Afterwards  Mrs.  Charles  L.  Pierson,  of  Boston. 


A  YOUNG  GIRL'S  WARTIME  DIARY  37 

for  Sue's  wedding,  and  not  being  able  to  get  him  a  fur- 
lough, sent  him  to  New  York  on  official  business.  We 
thought  he  was  on  the  advance,  far  away,  when  suddenly 
at  2  o'clock  he  appeared,  having  come  down  with  Annie 
Haggerty,^  whom  he  had  gone  to  see  in  New  York.  He 
looks  splendid  and  seems  in  good  spirits.  To  have  him 
at  home  is  lovely.  We  were  saying  this  morning  that  we 
were  all  together  but  one,  and  now  that  one  has  come. 
He  said  tonight,  poor  boy,  that  he  wished  we  were  done 
with  this  fighting  and  expected  to  be  '^slaughtered  before 
it  was  over.''  I  suppose  they  must  all  feel  so,  seeing 
so  many  of  their  friends  and  companions  dying  around 
them.  Tomorrow,  Harry  and  he  meet.  They've  not 
seen  each  other  since  Cedar  Mountain.  So  far  the  Lord 
has  been  very  merciful  to  us,  in  turning  all  our  sorrows 
to  joy. 

October  30th,  1862,  Well !  Sue's  gone  and  we've  had 
a  perfect  success  in  the  wedding,  with  only  one  thing  to  mar 
our  enjoyment  of  the  day.  This  morning  three  gentle- 
men appeared  and  asked  Father,  for  the  Governor,  to  be 
Provost  Marshal  of  Richmond,  Queens  and  Suffolk 
Counties,  and  he  refused  the  offer.  Mother,  Nellie  and 
I  felt  dreadfully  because  we  thought  of  the  great  good  he 
might  do,  and  of  the  dreadful  rascal  who  will  probably 
be  put  in,  but  he  felt  he  couldn't  do  it  well  (of  course  he'd 
do  it  better  than  anyone  else  they  give  it  to),  and  I  think, 
too,  that  Rob's  advice  had  something  to  do  with  it,  for  he 
said  that  it  required  a  military  man  and  that  he  knew 
Father  couldn't  do  it. 

Rob  went  back  this  afternoon,  not  much  wanting  to, 
certainly,  dear  boy.  It  must  be  dreadfully  hard  to  go 
away  from  this  nice,  homey  house  into  cold,  weariness  and 
fighting. 

1  Afterwards  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw. 


CHAPTER  III 
Marriage 

The  diary  ends  abruptly  as  it  began.  Among  the 
entries  for  the  first  day,  —  July  23,  1861,  —  is  a  list  of  her 
friends  in  the  army,  including  the  name  of  "  Capt.  Lowell 
of  the  U.  S.  A/'  It  is  a  remarkable  and  characteristic 
fact,  that  this  is  the  only  mention  made,  in  all  the  papers 
of  Mrs.  Lowell  which  I  have  examined,  of  the  man  whose 
name  she  bore  for  more  than  forty  years.  Their  acquaint- 
ance must,  when  this  entry  was  made,  have  been  only 
a  slight  one.  In  the  spring  of  1863  when  Lowell  was 
organizing  the  Second  Massachusetts  Cavalry  in  Boston, 
he  again  met  Josephine  Shaw,  and  became  engaged  to  her 
after  he  had  seen  her  only  nine  times.  Miss  Elizabeth 
C.  Putnam,  a  friend  of  Mrs.  LowelFs,  said :  "  It  was  in 
the  spring  of  1863  that  I  first  saw  Effie  Shaw.  She  was 
sitting  on  a  packing  box  at  the  Camp  at  Readville, 
the  afternoon  sun  striking  across  the  feather  on  her 
hat,  and  lighting  up  her  delicate  complexion,  her  fine 
hair  and  fair  brow.  She  was  staying  with  Mrs.  John 
Forbes  at  Milton,  and  Lowell  had  asked  her  to  be  his 
wife/' 

Her  love  was  most  worthily  bestowed.  The  necessary 
limitations  of  space  permit  only  brief  mention  of  Lowell's 
family,  and  the  important  incidents  of  his  career.    Charles 

38 


»•         3         »      » 


>•>        >,>»,>,       >      > 


MARRIAGE  39 

Russell  Lowell,  Jr./  was  born  in  Boston,  January  2,  1835, 
the  eldest  son  of  Charles  Russell  Lowell  and  Anna  Cabot 
Jackson,  his  wife,  and  grandson  of  Rev.  Charles  Lowell, 
D.D.  The  poet,  James  Russell  Lowell,  was  his  uncle. 
Entering  Harvard  in  1850,  he  graduated  at  the  head  of 
the  class  of  '54.  During  his  college  years  Lowell  held 
a  leading  position,  being  especially  noted  for  his  inde- 
pendent intellect  and  commanding  will.  Much  of  his 
time  was  devoted  to  sociological  studies,  and  his  com- 
mencement oration  showed  deep  and  intelligent  interest 
in  the  welfare  of  the  people.  He  took  with  him  from 
college  the  reputation  of  a  thoughtful  and  brilliant  youth 
of  whom  much  might  be  expected  in  the  futm-e. 

Lowell  immediately  began  to  earn  his  own  Hving,  and 
the  year  after  his  graduation,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  was 
already  in  a  position  of  trust  and  promise,  at  the  rolling- 
mill  of  the  Trenton  Iron  Company  of  New  Jersey.  While 
thus  employed,  the  shadow  of  a  grave  disease  fell  upon  him. 
A  friend  found  him  in  his  room  bleeding  at  the  lungs,  and 
it  became  necessary  for  him  to  resign  his  position,  stop 
work,  and  seek  health  outdoors  in  a  mild  climate.  Then 
followed  three  years  of  travel,  of  which  more  than  two 
were  spent  in  foreign  countries,  much  of  the  time  on  horse- 
back, so  that  he  became  an  expert  rider.  By  1858  he  was 
sufficiently  recovered  to  return  to  America,  but  not  at 
first   for   life  on   the  Atlantic  coast.     In   1860,  feeling 

*  Much  of  the  mformation  relating  to  General  Lowell  given  here 
was  obtained  from  his  biography  by  Professor  James  M.  Peirce. 
Harvard  Memorial  Biographies,  Vol.  I.  "  The  Life  and  Letters  of 
Charles  Russell  Lowell,'!  by  Edward  W.  Emerson,  has  also  been 
helpful. 


40  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

stronger,  he  took  charge  of  the  Mt.  Savage  Iron  Works, 
Cumberland,  Maryland,  where  the  opening  of  the  war 
found  him  at  the  head  of  a  small  city  of  workingmen. 

When  Lowell  heard  the  news  of  the  attack  on  the  Sixth 
Massachusetts  in  Baltimore,  he  resigned  his  position  at 
Cumberland,  and  went  immediately  to  Washington,  being 
obliged  to  walk  from  Baltimore,  as  the  railroad  track  had 
been  torn  up.  Arriving  thus  among  the  first  comers  at 
the  capital,  April  21,  1861,  he  made  personal  application 
for  a  commission,  both  to  President  Lincoln  and  General 
Sherman.  He  was  a  man  of  striking  appearance  and 
manner,  and  having  created  a  favorable  impression,  was 
conamissioned  Captain  of  the  Third  —  afterwards  Sixth 
—  Regiment  of  U.  S.  Cavalry,  May  14,  1861,  and  at  once 
began  recruiting  and  drilling  his  company  in  preparation 
for  the  field. 

The  Third  Cavalry  was  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
in  the  Peninsular  Campaign  of  1862,  as  part  of  Stoneman^s 
command,  and  Lowell  was  nominated  for  the  brevet  of 
Major  for  distinguished  services  at  WlUiamsburgh  and 
Slatersville.  His  brother  James,  wounded  at  Glendale, 
June  30,  died  a  prisoner,  July  4  of  that  year.  As  aide  on 
the  staff  of  General  McClellan,  Lowell  was  conspicuous 
for  bravery  at  Malvern  Hill  and  South  Mountain,  and 
also  at  Antietam,  where  his  horse  was  shot  under  him; 
in  this  battle  a  bullet  passed  through  his  coat,  and  another 
broke  his  sabre.  In  recognition  of  his  gallantry  General 
McClellan  selected  Lowell  to  carry  to  President  Lincoln 
at  Washington  thirty-nine  captured  colors,  the  trophies 
of  the  campaign  —  a  high  honor,  and  equivalent  to  a  rec- 


MARRIAGE  41 

ommendation  for  promotion.  November  of  '62  found 
Lowell  in  Boston,  organizing  the  Second  Massachusetts 
Cavalry,  of  which  on  April  15,  1863,  he  was  appointed 
Colonel.  It  was  at  this  time  that  he  again  met  and  be- 
came engaged  to  Josephine  Shaw,  whose  brother  Robert 
was  his  friend. 

When  Lowell's  new  regiment  was  ready  to  take  the  field, 
he  led  it  from  Boston  and  was  given  command  of  the 
cavalry  of  the  Department  of  Washington,  with  head- 
quarters at  Vienna,  Virginia,  fifteen  miles  from  the 
capital,  where  he  was  kept  busy  watching  Mosby  and 
preventing  his  raids.  On  starting  for  the  front  Lowell 
gave  his  fianc^  a  horse  which  had  been  wounded  under 
him  at  Antietam  and  from  fright  was  useless  in  battle, 
a  big  Virginia  roan  named  Berold,  which  she  rode  during 
the  srnnmer  and  autrnnn  of  1863,  and  for  many  years 
afterwards,  the  horse  living  to  a  great  age.  Lowell  is 
said  to  have  had  thirteen  horses  shot  under  him  before 
he  himself  was  killed. 

The  career  of  young  Shaw  in  the  army  should  be 
traced  as  well  as  that  of  Lowell.  His  promotion  had  been 
rapid.  From  the  ranks  of  the  New  York  Seventh  he  had 
applied  for,  and  on  May  28, 1861,  received  a  conamission  as 
Second  Lieutenant  in  the  Second  Massachusetts  and  started 
for  the  war  with  that  regiment;  he  was  commissioned 
First  Lieutenant  July  8,  1861,  at  the  Battle  of  Cedar 
Mountain  served  as  an  aide  on  General  Gordon's  staff, 
and  on  August  10,  1862,  was  promoted  Captain.  Early 
in  1863,  when  the  Government  decided  to  form  negro 
regiments.  Governor  Andrew,  by  letter,  offered  Shaw  the 


42  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

colonelcy  of  one  to  be  raised  in  Massachusetts.  At  this 
time  Shaw  was  in  camp  at  Stafford  Court  House,  to  which 
place  the  letter  was  carried  by  his  father.  After  some 
hesitation  due  to  misgivings  as  to  his  abihty  to  fill  so  im- 
portant a  position,  he  accepted  the  commission  of  Colonel 
of  the  Fifty-fourth  Massachusetts  Volunteer  Infantry, 
which  bears  date  April  17,  1863,  and  immediately  gave 
all  his  energy  to  the  organization  of  his  new  command, 
the  first  regiment  of  colored  troops,  from  a  free  state, 
mustered  into  the  Federal  service.  On  the  2d  of  May, 
1863,  he  married  Anna  Kneeland,  daughter  of  Ogden 
Haggerty,  Esq.,  of  New  York,  and  on  the  28th  of  the 
same  month,  he  left  Boston  for  the  seat  of  war,  at  the  head 
of  his  command.  Their  triumphal  march  through  Boston 
has  often  been  described.  Early  in  July  Shaw  wrote 
from  St.  Helena  Island,  South  Carolina,  to  General  Strong, 
expressing  a  desire  to  be  in  his  brigade,  a  wish  which  was 
soon  after  gratified.  On  July  18,  the  day  of  the  battle  of 
Fort  Wagner,   Shaw  wrote  home  from   Morris  Island  : 

''We're  in  General  Strong's  Brigade.  We  came  up  here 
last  night,  and  were  out  again  all  night  in  a  very  heavy 
rain.  Fort  Wagner  is  being  very  heavily  bombarded. 
We  are  not  far  from  it.  We  hear  nothing  but  praise  of 
the  Fifty-fourth  on  all  hands." 

After  writing  this  letter,  which  was  his  last,  Colonel 
Shaw  received  orders  to  report  with  his  regiment  at  Gen- 
eral Strong's  headquarters,  and  there  he  was  offered  the 
post  of  honor,  because  of  greatest  danger,  the  advance, 
that  evening,  in  the  assault  on  Fort  Wagner.  Here  was 
the  opportunity  he  had  waited  for,  ''when  his  men  could 


COL.  ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW,  1863 


MARRIAGE  43 

fight  alongside  of  white  soldiers,  and  show  somebody  be- 
sides their  officers,  what  stuff  they  were  made  of." 

The  closing  incidents  of  Colonel  Shaw's  Hfe  were  well 
described  in  a  letter  written  shortly  after  the  battle  by 
the  surgeon  of  the  regiment : 

'^  General  Strong  had  been  impressed  with  the  high 
character  of  the  regiment  and  its  officers,  and  he  wished 
to  assign  them  the  post  where  the  most  severe  work  was 
to  be  done,  and  the  highest  honor  was  to  be  won.  I  had 
been  his  guest  for  some  days,  and  know  how  he  regarded 
them.  The  march  across  Folly  and  Morris  Islands,  was 
over  a  very  sandy  road,  and  was  very  wearisome.  When 
they  had  come  within  six  hundred  yards  of  Fort  Wagner, 
they  formed  in  Une  of  battle,  the  Colonel  leading  the  first, 
and  the  Major  the  second  battalion. 

'^At  this  point  the  regiment,  together  with  the  next 
supporting  regiments,  the  Sixth  Connecticut,  Ninth  Maine, 
and  others,  remained  half  an  hour.  Then  at  half  past 
seven,  the  order  for  the  charge  was  given.  The  regiment 
advanced  at  quick  time,  changing  to  double-quick  when 
some  distance  on.  When  about  one  hundred  yards  from 
the  fort,  the  Rebel  musketry  opened  with  such  terrible 
effect,  that  for  an  instant  the  first  battalion  hesitated  ; 
but  only  for  an  instant,  for  Colonel  Shaw,  springing  to  the 
front,  and  waving  his  sword,  shouted  'Forward,  Fifty- 
fourth  ! '  and  with  another  cheer  and  a  shout,  they  rushed 
through  the  ditch  and  gained  the  parapet  on  the  right. 
Colonel  Shaw  was  one  of  the  first  to  scale  the  walls.  He 
stood  erect  to  urge  forward  his  men,  and  while  shouting 
for  them  to  press  on,  was  shot  dead  and  fell  into  the  fort. 
I  parted  with  Colonel  Shaw,  as  he  rode  forward  to  join 
his  regiment;  as  he  was  leaving,  he  turned  back  and 
gave  me  his   letters    and   other   papers,  telling  me  to 


44  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

keep  them  and  forward  them  to  his  father  if  anything 
occm-red/^ 

^^  Bravely  he  led  the  men,  and  fell  as  a  brave  and  noble 
soldier  should,  in  the  very  front,  into  the  fort,  and  now 
sleeps  there  with  the  brave  fellows  who  were  with  him 
in  his  life,  anxious  to  shield  him,  to  rescue,  to  avenge.'^ 

Two  days  after  the  assault  on  Fort  Wagner,  Colonel 
Lowell  wrote  to  Miss  Shaw : 

^'A.  has  just  sent  me  a  report  about  dear  Rob,  and  it 
does  not  seem  to  me  possible  that  it  should  be  true.  We 
have  been  talking  over  the  good  fellows  who  have  gone 
before  in  the  war.  There  is  none  who  has  been  so  widely 
and  dearly  loved  as  he." 

In  another  letter  he  wrote : 

^'Everything  that  comes  about  Rob,  shows  his  death 
to  have  been  more  and  more  completely  that,  which 
every  soldier,  and  every  man  must  long  to  die.  But  it 
is  given  to  very  few,  for  very  few  do  their  duty  as  Rob 
did.  I  am  thankful  that  they  buried  him  with  his  'nig- 
gers,^ for  they  were  brave  men  and  they  were  his  men." 

The  heroic  death  of  Colonel  Shaw  profoundly  stirred 
the  hearts  of  northern  people,  and  brought  many  touching 
proofs  of  sympathy  to  his  young  widow  and  his  father's 
family;  his  body  was  not  recovered,  and  was  probably 
buried  where  he  died  ''with  his  niggers,"  as  his  ad- 
versaries said.  The  people  of  his  native  city,  with  the 
aid  of  Augustus  Saint  Gaudens's  art,  have  worthily  com- 
memorated his  name  and  fame,  and  also  made  record  of 
the  officers  and  men  of  his  command  who  died  with  him, 
in  the  monument  on  Boston  Common. 


MARRIAGE  45 

Lights  and  shadows,  in  swift  succession,  brought  joy  and 
sorrow  into  the  Ufe  of  Josephine  Shaw  in  the  fateful  year 
1863.  The  spring  and  summer  had  witnessed  her  only 
brother's  marriage  and  death ;  the  autumn  saw  her  union 
with  the  man  to  whom  she  had  given  her  heart.  Although 
Mrs.  Shaw  at  first  preferred  that  the  marriage  be  post- 
poned until  the  close  of  the  war,  she  was  persuaded  to 
change  her  mind,  and  in  her  twentieth  year  Josephine 
became  the  wife  of  Colonel  Lowell  at  the  Unitarian  Church 
on  Staten  Island,  on  the  31st  of  October,  1863,  and  went 
to  live  with  her  husband,  at  his  headquarters,  a  little 
farm-house  at  Vienna,  Virginia.  This  was  a  tranquil 
interval  in  the  war,  and  so  it  was  possible  for  the  young 
couple  to  pass  much  of  the  winter  of  '63-4  together,  and 
Mrs.  Lowell  devoted  many  hours  to  the  care  of  the  sick 
and  wounded  soldiers,  in  the  military  hospitals  near  by. 

Emerson,  in  his  life  of  Lowell,  says : 

'^Chaplain  Humphreys  wrote  home  of  the  kindly  and 
refining  influence  of  Mrs.  LowelUs  presence  in  the  camp, 
and  of  the  hospitality  that  welcomed  the  officers  in  turn, 
at  the  little  home  which  the  colonel  and  she  had  estab- 
lished there.  .  .  .  With  the  foreigners  in  the  hospital  I 
was  greatly  assisted  by  the  wife  of  the  Commander,  who 
visited  the  patients  verj^  frequently.  She  delighted  the 
Frenchmen,  Italians  and  Germans  by  conversing  with 
them  in  their  own  languages,  that  so  vividly  recalled  their 
early  homes.  She  often  assisted  in  writing  letters  for 
the  disabled  soldiers,  and  when  I  sought  to  give  comfort 
to  the  dying,  her  presence  soothed  the  pangs  of  parting, 
with  a  restful  consciousness  of  woman's  faithful  watching 
and  a  mother's  tenderness." 


46  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

But  the  brief  period  of  happiness  with  her  husband  in 
the  camp  at  Vienna  soon  passed,  for  in  July,  1864,  orders 
called  Colonel  Lowell  to  more  distant  and  dangerous  duty, 
and  his  young  wife  returned  to  her  father^s  home.  On 
the  20th  of  the  same  month,  Colonel  Lowell  was  given 
command  of  a  new  Provisional  Brigade,  and  at  Winchester, 
September  19,  when  in  conamand  of  a  Reserve  Brigade 
by  appointment  of  General  Sheridan,  he  participated  in 
a  superb  charge.  On  the  15th  of  October,  the  army  was 
surprised  at  Cedar  Creek,  in  the  absence  of  General  Sheri- 
dan, and,  after  his  historic  ride  from  Winchester,  saved 
by  his  return. 

Emerson  gives  this  touching  extract  from  one  of  LowelFs 
letters  to  his  wife :  ^'I  don't  want  to  be  shot  till  IVe  had 
a  chance  to  come  home.  I  have  no  idea  that  I  shall  be 
hit,  but  I  want  so  much  not  to  be  now  that  it  sometimes 
frightens  me.''  But  it  was  ordered  otherwise;  Lowell's 
wish  was  not  to  be  granted.  The  following  account  of 
his  last  fight  is  taken  from  the  Harvard  Biographies,  and 
Emerson's  ''Life."  On  the  18th  of  October,  1864,  Colonel 
Lowell  was  ordered  to  make  a  reconnaisance,  and,  at  the 
head  of  the  Reserve  Brigade,  led  the  Cavalry  Corps  into 
action.  Of  this  movement.  General  William  Dwight, 
commanding  the  First  Division  of  the  Nineteenth  Corps, 
wrote:  ''They  moved  past  me,  that  splendid  Cavalry; 
if  they  reached  the  pike  I  felt  secure.  Lowell  got  by  me 
before  I  could  speak,  but  I  looked  after  him  for  a  long 
distance.  Exquisitely  mounted,  the  picture  of  a  soldier, 
—  erect,  confidant,  defiant — he  moved  at  the  head  of 
the  finest  Brigade  of  Cavalry  that  today  scorns  the  earth 


MARRIAGE  47 

it  treads."  And  so  Lowell  rode  into  action.  Soon  a  horse 
was  shot  under  him.  Then  at  1  p.m.,  on  October  19, 
he  was  wounded  by  a  spent  ball  in  the  right  breast,  the 
lung  collapsed  and  hemorrhage  ensued.  For  an  hour 
and  a  half  the  wounded  man  lay  on  the  ground,  under 
temporary  shelter,  until  he  heard  an  order  to  advance, 
when  with  assistance  he  remounted  his  horse,  sitting  firm 
and  erect,  but  the  voice  was  gone,  —  he  could  only  whisper. 
In  the  hail  of  fire,  in  which  Lowell  sat  his  horse,  he  re- 
ceived his  second  mortal  wound;  a  bullet  severed  the 
spine  at  the  neck,  paralyzing  the  body.  The  wounded 
officer  giving  no  sign  of  suffering,  and  retaining  a  clear 
mind,  dictated  loving  messages  for  his  wife  and  family, 
and  gave  orders  for  his  command.  Early  next  morning, 
October  20,  1864,  at  Middletown,  Virginia,  in  his  thirtieth 
year,  he  died.  ' ^  We  all  shed  tears, "  said  Custer, ' '  when  we 
knew  we  had  lost  him.  It  is  the  greatest  loss  the  Cavalry 
Corps  has  ever  suffered."  Sheridan  said  of  him  :  '^ I  do  not 
think  there  was  a  quality  which  I  could  have  added  to 
Lowell.  He  was  the  perfection  of  a  man  and  a  soldier." 
For  a  year  Colonel  Lowell  had  done  the  full  work  of 
a  Brigadier  General  of  Volunteers,  and  by  a  sad  coinci- 
dence his  commission  to  this  rank,  determined  on  days 
before,  was  signed  on  the  19th  of  October,  1864,  the  day 
on  which  he  received  his  death  wound  at  Cedar  Creek, 
and  too  late  for  him  to  wear  the  higher  honor  he  had 
earned  so  well.  The  funeral  of  General  Lowell  took  place 
on  Friday,  October  28,  at  the  College  Chapel,  Cambridge, 
and  his  remains  were  afterwards  interred  at  Mount 
Auburn  Cemetery,  with  the  appropriate  military  honors. 


CHAPTER  IV 
The  Worker 

After  the  death  of  General  Lowell,  his  widow,  not  yet 
twenty-one  years  old,  lived  with  her  parents  on  Staten 
Island.  There  her  daughter,  Carlotta  Russell,  —  named 
for  her  father, — was  born,  November  30,  1864.  The 
power  to  rally  from  the  tragedy  which  had  clouded  her 
life  did  not  come  at  first.  A  friend  describes  her  at  that 
time  as  ^ Agoing  about  the  house  with  her  little  girl  in  her 
arms,  not  sad  but  with  a  quiet  look  as  if  she  were  living 
in  another  world.  Time  afterward  softened  the  poignancy 
of  her  grief,  and  those  nearest  to  her  felt  that  her  life  was 
a  happy  one."  She  had  a  sitting  room  in  her  father's 
house  in  which  she  kept  near  her  Lowell's  sword  and 
other  treasures,  and  there  she  used  to  work.  Berold, 
his  favorite  horse,  was  cared  for  in  her  father's  stable  until 
his  death,  and  she  and  her  little  daughter  spent  part  of 
each  year  with  General  Lowell's  family  in  Massachusetts. 

But  grief  at  her  husband's  loss  was  not  permitted  to 
paralyze  Mrs.  Lowell's  energies,  and  she  soon  began  her 
wonderful  work  for  the  alleviation  of  human  misery, 
which  was  to  last  for  more  than  forty  years.  Shortly 
after  the  close  of  the  war,  the  Freedmen's  Association 
was  formed,  with  which  Mr.  Shaw  was  actively  identified, 
and  his  daughter  joined  one  of  its  committees  having 
an  office  in  Bible  House  on  lower  Fourth  Avenue,  New 
York  City.     Among  the  objects  of  this  association  was 

48 


»•»,*.  >»,  »,  »  > 


»    »   ■,    »  ,» 


«   >     *a 


THE  WORKER  49 

the  establishment  of  schools  for  the  colored  people  in  the 
South,  and  in  furtherance  of  this  work,  when  she  was  only 
twenty-three,  Mrs.  Lowell  and  Miss  Ellen  Colhns  went 
to  Virginia  in  1866,  and  visited  many  schools  for  colored 
children  in  Richmond,  Petersburg  and  other  places, 
stopping  as  they  journeyed,  at  Httle  country  homes. 
There  was  much  active  opposition  at  that  time  to  this 
kind  of  educational  work,  so  that  the  position  of  the 
teachers  was  difficult.  Most  of  them  were  young  women, 
and  lived  with  white  families  willing  to  help  the  freedmen. 
The  visit  of  the  two  young  northern  women  brought 
needed  encouragement  to  the  teachers,  and  because  of  it 
more  schools  were  opened.  The  friendship  between  Mrs. 
Lowell  and  Miss  Collins  continued  until  Mrs.  LowelFs 
death.  Miss  CoUins,  on  Mrs.  Lowell's  nomination,  was 
appointed  a  '^ Visitor"  by  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
in  1876,  and  was  annually  reappointed  for  many  years. 
Her  visits  to  the  public  charities  of  New  York  City,  and 
reports  of  the  conditions  found  in  them  were  thoroughly 
practical  and  useful  to  the  Board,  and  directly  contributed 
to  bring  about  reforms  which  have  made  Ufe  less  hard  for 
the  city's  poor,  sick  and  unfortunate. 

In  December,  1869,  having  sold  the  homestead  on  Bard 
Avenue  to  his  son-in-law,  Robert  B.  Minturn,  Mr.  Shaw 
removed  with  his  little  familj^,  then  comprising  only  Mrs. 
Shaw,  Mrs.  Lowell  and  her  little  girl,  to  a  smaller  house 
near  by  on  the  shore  of  the  Kill  Van  Kull.  All  of  Mrs. 
Lowell's  letters  subsequently  dated  from  Staten  Island 
were  written  at  this  later  home. 

Mrs.  Lowell  revisited  Europe  in  1870  with  her  daughter, 


60  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

a  cousin,  and  a  friend,  and  letters  of  introduction  made 
them  known  to  many  distinguished  people.  They  visited 
the  Kingsleys  at  Eversley,  and  also  in  the  Inner  Cloisters 
of  Westminster,  and  were  hospitably  entertained  at 
the  homes  of  Dean  Howson  and  his  wife  at  Chester,  and 
of  Canon  Venables  at  Lincoln.  They  also  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Canon  Benson,  afterwards  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  of  Hughes,  and  of  Carlyle.  The  sympathies 
of  the  latter  were  with  the  South  in  the  Civil  War,  and 
Mrs.  Lowell,  who  had  several  interesting  conversations 
with  him  about  the  great  Rebellion,  thought  he  did  not 
fully  appreciate  either  the  quality  or  the  patriotic  motives 
of  the  young  men  who  had  fought  in  the  armies  of  the 
North.  Wishing  to  influence  his  opinion  on  a  subject 
so  sacred  to  her,  Mrs.  Lowell  afterwards  sent  him  a  set  of 
the  Harvard  Memorial  Biographies,  containing,  among 
others,  sketches  of  the  lives  of  her  husband  and  her  brother, 
northern  men  who  had  laid  down  their  lives  for  their 
country.  In  acknowledgment  of  this  volume  she  received 
the  following  letter: 

Chelsea,  10  March,  1870. 
Dear  Madam  : 

I  received  your  gentle,  kind  and  beautiful  message  and 
in  obedience  to  so  touching  a  command,  soft  to  me  as 
sunlight,  or  moonlight,  but  imperative  as  few  could  be,  I 
have  read  those  lives  you  marked  for  me ;  with  several  of 
the  others ;  and  intend  to  read  the  whole  before  I  finish 
—  many  thanks  to  you  for  those  volumes  and  that  note. 

It  would  need  a  heart  much  harder  than  mine  not  to 
recognize  the  high  and  noble  spirit  that  dwelt  in  those 
young  men,  their  heroic  readiness,  complete  devotedness, 
their  patience,  diligence,  shining  valor  and  virtue  in  the 


THE  WORKER  6i 

cause  they  saw  to  be  the  highest,  while  alas  !  any  difference 
I  may  feel  on  that  latter  point,  only  deepens  to  me  the 
sorrowful  and  noble  tragedy  each  of  their  lives  is.  You 
may  believe  me,  Madam,  I  would  strew  flowers  on  their 
graves  along  with  you,  and  piously  bid  them  rest  in  Hope  ! 
It  is  not  doubtful  to  me  that  they  also  have  added  this 
mite  to  what  is  the  eternal  cause  of  God  and  man ;  or  that, 
in  circuitous  but  sure  ways,  all  men.  Black  and  White, 
will  infalHbly  get  their  profit  of  the  same. 
*  With  many  thanks  and  regards,  dear  Madam,  I  remain, 
Yrs.  sincerely  T.  Carlyle. 

The  necessities  of  the  war  had  drawn  many  women  into 
hospital  work,  and  after  it  was  over,  their  interest  in  such 
work  continued,  although  the  military  hospitals  soon 
ceased  to  exist.  On  the  invitation  of  Miss  Louisa  Lee 
Schuyler,  a  number  of  these  New  York  women,  including 
Mrs.  Lowell,  met  at  her  house  in  1872,  and  formed  the 
''Visiting  Committee  of  Bellevue  and  other  Hospitals.^' 
This  started  such  a  stream  of  well-known  women,  down 
East  Twenty-sixth  Street,  to  Bellevue,  that  it  was  said 
to  be  the  fashionable  promenade  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  and  Mrs.  Lowell  then  began  her  acquaintance  with 
the  public  charities  of  New  York  City,  whose  adminis- 
tration she  strove  for  a  generation  to  improve.  It  was 
at  this  time  also  that  she  became  interested  in  the 
Richmond  County  Poorhouse  on  Staten  Island. 

Mrs.  Lowell  spent  the  winters  at  her  father's  house  on 
Staten  Island  until  1874  when,  as  she  wished  her  daughter 
to  attend  school  in  New  York,  Mr.  Shaw  bought  her  the 
house  No.  120  East  Thirtieth  Street.  For  many  years  she 
used  to  return  to  Staten  Island  for  the  week  ends,  and  fre- 


52  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

quent  visits  were  paid  in  summer  to  her  husband's  sister, 
Mrs.  George  Putnam  at  her  home  at  Ponkapog  near 
Boston.  After  the  death  of  Mr.  Shaw  in  1882  her  mother 
rented  the  house  next  door,  No.  118,  and  hved  there  until 
her  death  in  1902.  The  houses  were  made  to  connect  on 
the  first  floor,  and  there  was  constant  going  and  coming ; 
the  three  women,  Mrs.  Shaw,  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  her  daugh- 
ter were  one  family.  A  friend  said  of  them  ^^I  had  never 
before  been  with  people  who  talked  over  the  affairs  of  city 
and  State  exactly  as  they  would  those  of  their  own  family, 
and  on  Decoration  Day,  when  the  flag  hung  across  the 
doors  of  these  two  houses,  one  knew  what  it  meant  to  the 
women  within.'' 

Governor  Tilden's  appointment  of  Mrs.  Lowell  in  1876, 
when  she  was  only  thirty-two  years  old,  as  the  first  woman 
commissioner  of  the  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities, 
came  as  a  well  merited  recognition  of  the  public  services 
she  had  already  performed;  the  circumstances  which 
obtained  her  this  distinction  are  elsewhere  described. 
Mrs.  Lowell  accepted  the  appointment,  and  her  official 
position  afforded  opportunities  for  the  prosecution  of  her 
work  in  a  wider  field.  The  publication  and  circulation 
of  her  able  reports  as  state  papers,  not  only  preserved 
them  in  the  archives  of  the  Board,  but  also  gained  for 
the  writer  increased  influence  and  a  larger  following.  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  reappointed  by  Governor  Cornell  May  25, 
1881,  for  a  full  term  of  eight  years,  at  the  close  of  which, 
in  1889,  she  retired  from  the  Board,  to  be  free  to  take 
up  other  work,  notwithstanding  the  expressed  wish  of 
her  colleagues  that  she  accept  another  term  of  office. 


THE  WORKER  53 

No  commissioner  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  ever 
rendered  more  faithful  and  efficient  service  than  did  Mrs. 
Lowell  dm-ing  the  thiiteen  years  of  her  membership,  and 
her  retirement  was  regarded  by  her  associates  as  both 
a  personal  and  a  public  loss. 

Work,  effective  and  continuous,  was  easy  and  natural 
to  Mrs.  Lowell ;  she  was  endowed  with  a  strong  constitu- 
tion, and  all  her  habits  of  life  were  such  as  to  fit  her  for 
instant  response  to  any  call  for  service ;  she  was  an  early 
riser,  and  retired  early,  and  no  petty  cares  were  allowed 
to  make  demands  upon  her  time.  The  years  of  her  great- 
est activity  were  before  the  drudgery  of  correspondence 
and  the  preparation  of  papers  had  been  diminished  by  the 
assistance  of  the  private  stenographer ;  and  typewriting 
machines  and  manifolding  inventions,  now  in  common 
use,  were  then  little  known ;  so  she  early  learned  to 
rely  entirely  upon  her  own  hand,  and  depended  upon  it 
throughout  her  life.  Her  handwriting  was  large,  rapid, 
even,  and  strong,  and  the  interlineations  or  erasures  in 
her  letters  or  papers  were  few.  By  dint  of  constant 
practice,  she  became  a  clear  and  concise  writer,  and  to 
the  habit  of  logical  and  orderly  statement,  she  soon  added 
an  easy  and  finished  hterary  style.  In  a  letter  which  she 
wrote  to  her  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Shaw,  on  the  last  day  of 
1893,  she  said:  '^I  have  just  counted  the  record  of  my 
letters  since  January  1,  1893.  I  find  this  is  the  1899th ! 
That's  rather  good  for  my  own  hand,  isn't  it?  Or  per- 
haps bad?  I  only  hope  that  half  have  been  of  some 
use  to  somebody  !"  Unfortunately  for  the  success  of  the 
task  of  the  biographer  Mrs.  Lowell  retained  no  copies  of 


54  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  letters  she  wrote,  and  with  the  exception  of  the  diary, 
some  manuscript  papers,  and  a  few  letters  addressed  to  her, 
to  which  she  attached  special  value,  practically  nothing 
helpful  in  the  preparation  of  this  work  was  found  at  her 
house  and  search  for  it  elsewhere  thus  became  necessary ; 
she  had  evidently  labored  for  daily  results,  entertaining  no 
idea,  or  refusing  to  be  influenced  by  any,  that  her  work 
was  of  great  historical  interest  and  value,  and  that  she  was 
really  breaking  a  path  in  many  fields  of  philanthropy. 

The  house.  No.  120  East  Thirtieth  Street,  which  Mrs. 
Lowell  and  her  daughter  occupied  from  1874  until  1905, 
was  not  large,  having  but  two  rooms  on  the  first  floor, 
and  it  was  her  custom  to  receive  visitors  in  the  sitting 
room  which  fronted  on  the  street.  Because  the  light 
was  better  and  room  for  her  papers  more  abundant  in  the 
dining  room,  in  which  her  desk  was  placed,  much  of  her 
writing  was  done  there ;  she  frequently  received  intimate 
friends  in  this  room,  and  many  important  consultations 
were  held  there,  while,  in  true  womanly  fashion,  she  used 
to  poke  the  fire,  whose  fitful  light  illumined  her  noble  face. 
Good  books  were  Mrs.  LowelFs  constant  companions ;  she 
possessed  a  considerable  library,  and  habitually  read  aloud 
to  her  mother  in  the  evenings.  She  had  a  lively  sense  of 
humor,  a  gift  so  helpful  when  life  is  devoted  to  serious 
work,  laughed  heartily,  and  would  often  lay  aside  her  corre- 
spondence to  read  aloud  a  comic  story  or  an  account  of 
some  heroic  act,  and  then  resume  her  work.  While  not  a 
musician,  she  had  an  inherited  love  of  good  music,  which 
she  cultivated,  and  frequently  attended  concerts ;  she  was 
fond  of  the  theatre,  but  always  avoided  tragedies. 


THE  WORKER  55 

In  her  attendance  at  committee  meetings,  Mrs.  Lowell 
was  absolutely  punctual,  coming  just  before  the  ap- 
pointed hour,  and  wasting  no  time  in  unnecessary  talk. 
She  had  a  retentive  memory,  which  was  strengthened  by 
careful  training,  and  kept  herself  well  informed  upon 
the  sociological  subjects  of  the  day.  Her  vocabulary  was 
large,  and  although  she  was  quite  proficient  in  three 
European  languages,  she  never  yielded  to  the  temptation 
to  display  superior  knowledge  by  quotations  from  them, 
but  habitually  and  skilfully  made  use  of  the  purest  and 
simplest  English  words  she  could  find  in  which  to  express 
her  meaning.  She  had  rare  moral  courage,  being  entirely 
without  either  self-consciousness  or  fear ;  and  by  practice 
became  a  ready,  fluent,  and  convincing  speaker,  equally 
effective  in  persuasion  on  the  platform  of  a  great  hall, 
or  with  a  friend  by  her  own  fireside.  While  she  had 
unusual  gifts  of  eloquence  at  command,  she  was  never  eager 
to  speak,  but  if  the  subject  under  consideration  was  opened 
by  others^  and  progressed  satisfactorily,  was  content  to  sit 
with  folded  hands,  and  depart  without  opening  her  lips. 
But  if,  on  the  contrary,  the  cause,  which  she  had  come 
prepared  to  advocate  seemed  in  danger,  she  would  seize 
the  first  opportunity  to  speak,  and  earnestly  take  part  in 
the  debate,  in  a  manner  which  showed  both  her  thorough 
understanding  and  her  preparation  for  the  discussion. 
She  was  a  courteous  and  cheerful  antagonist;  and  her 
espousal  of  any  cause  generally  carried  it  to  victory. 
During  the  fives  of  her  brothers-in-law,  George  WilUam 
Curtis  and  General  Barlow,  she  often  consulted  them 
about  her  work,  and  it  was  her  invariable  custom  to  read 


56  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

her  papers  to  her  mother  and  daughter,  and  to  welcome 
their  suggestions  and  advice. 

Her  official  position  as  a  commissioner  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  and  her  long  and  active  work  for  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
had  identified  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the  public  mind  as  the  friend 
and  promoter  of  organized  and  systematized  public  and 
private  charities ;  but  she  nevertheless  believed  first  in  the 
home,  and  its  influence,  and  strongly  disapproved  of  any 
woman  undertaking  public  work,  or  charitable  interests,  un- 
til even  the  smallest  home  duty  had  been  fully  discharged. 
She  was  always  at  heart  opposed  to  what  is  called  insti- 
tutionalism,  and  strove  to  preserve  the  home,  stoutly 
maintaining  that  even  a  poor  home,  if  its  conditions  were 
endurable,  was  preferable  to  a  good  institution ;  and  she  her- 
self never  became  institutionalized,  as  happens  to  so  many 
who  are  officially  connected  with  charitable  administration. 

No  self-interest  entered  into  Mrs.  Lowell's  character  ; 
she  lost  herself  in  the  people  she  loved,  or  whom  she  was 
trying  to  help.  Flattery  could  not  touch  her,  and  the 
complimentary  things  which  people  said,  or  wrote  about 
her,  made  no  apparent  impression ;  when  she  was  a  girl, 
she  was  not  indifferent  to  admiration,  but  after  her  hus- 
band's death  she  did  not  hear  its  appeal.  From  that 
time  until  the  end  of  her  life  she  was  always  dressed  in 
black,  but  did  not  wear  crepe ;  and  her  dresses,  while  sim- 
ple, were  always  suitable  for  the  occasion.  Her  hair  was 
neatly  coiled  quite  close  to  her  head,  and  not  ungracefully, 
for  it  was  naturally  sUghtly  waved.  Of  medium  height  and 
weight,  and  exceedingly  refined  in  her  personal  appearance, 


THE  WORKER  57 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  not  beautiful,  although  her  fine  head,  in- 
telligent eyes  and  clear  skin  made  her  very  attractive. 
She  was  in  everything  feminine,  and  unhke  many  other 
women  who  have  attained  prominence  in  pubHc  affairs,  she 
never  for  a  moment  lost  any  of  her  womanly  charm. 

There  was  about  Mrs.  Lowell's  home  a  simplicity  which 
made  every  one,  rich  or  poor,  feel  welcome  there,  and  it 
was  a  sanctuary  to  many  perplexed  and  troubled  souls. 
The  arrangement  of  her  rooms  was  such  as  to  suggest, 
to  persons  of  small  means,  new  ways  to  make  their  own 
humble  apartments  more  attractive.  Mrs.  Lowell  was 
not  rich,  as  wealth  is  estimated  now,  but  her  circumstances 
were  comfortable.  Although  she  had  a  fine  sense  of  beauty 
she  cared  little  for  the  personal  possession  of  things, 
futilities  they  seemed  to  her,  and  allowed  herself  no 
extravagances;  so,  as  her  wants  were  few,  her  income 
proved  more  than  sufficient  for  her  needs,  and  she  always 
had  something  to  give,  when  her  heart  and  judgment  im- 
pelled her  to  open  her  purse.  Had  she  restrained  her  hand, 
she  might  have  ridden  in  her  own  carriage ;  but  she  pre- 
ferred to  give  to  worthy  objects,  and  contentedly  walked 
or  rode  in  the  street-cars,  as  she  went  busily  about  the 
great  city,  whose  streets  she  trod  so  long.  Full  well  she 
reahzed  the  truth  of  Joaquin  Miller's  lines  ^ : 

For  all  you  can  hold  in  your  cold  dead  hand, 
Is  what  you  have  given  away. 

The  simple  charm  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  daily  life  was  re- 
flected in  her  personaUty.     Her  step  was  quick  and  firm, 

1  From  his  memorial  poem  to  Peter  Cooper,  1791-1883,  phil- 
anthropist and  founder  of  Cooper  Institute,  New  York. 


58  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  all  her  movements  so  well  adjusted  as  to  show  the 
full  control  exercised  over  her  body  by  her  mind.  Even 
toward  the  end  of  her  life,  her  eyes  were  bright  and  sym- 
pathetic, and  her  abundant  brown  hair  only  faintly  tinged 
with  gray ;  her  skin  remained  fresh  and  clear  as  a  girFs ; 
and  some  one  beautifully  said  of  her  face  "that  it  always 
seemed  like  an  alabaster  vase  with  the  light  shining 
through/^  She  was  sweet  with  an  inward  peace,  and 
strong  for  any  task. 

In  her  religious  belief  Mrs.  Lowell  was  firm  and  sincere, 
but  liberal  and  without  bigotry.  She  was  brought  up  in 
and  always  held  to  the  Unitarian  faith,  and  while  living 
on  Staten  Island  attended  regularly  the  little  Unitarian 
church  at  Sailors'  Snug  Harbor. 

Here  her  brother-in-law,  George  William  Curtis,  for 
many  years  conducted  the  simple  services  when  there 
was  no  pastor.  "  This  service,"  says  her  daughter,  "  was, 
I  think,  more  congenial  to  my  mother  than  any  other. 
She  was  a  great  believer  in  going  to  church  and  always 
went  wherever  she  was.''  She  made  the  Sabbath  a  day 
of  rest,  except  when  work  seemed  to  her  an  evident  duty ; 
and  chose  such  recreations  for  the  day  as  did  not  involve 
the  labor  of  others.  Throughout  her  life  she  loved  to 
read  the  Bible. 

An  aristocrat  by  birth  and  culture,  all  doors  to  which 
these  qualifications  give  entrance  were  open  to  Mrs. 
Lowell,  but  she  went  seldom  into  general  society,  pos- 
sibly because  experience  of  it  had  taught  her  that  the 
time  might  be  better  employed,  and  moved  only  in  the 
higher   aristocracy  of   usefulness.     She  was   democratic 


THE  WORKER  59 

by  nature  and  training,  and  was  content  to  live  and 
work  with  everyday  people,  whose  names  did  not  ap- 
pear in  the  social  columns  of  the  daily  papers.  It  was 
not  only  Mrs.  Lowell's  to  do,  but  to  inspire ;  she  was  a 
quickening  spirit,  and  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into 
many  others.  And  she  was  always  a  spur  —  sometimes 
an  uncomfortable,  pricking  spur  —  to  the  laggard;  and 
she  was  a  standard-bearer  to  those  who  tried  to  lead. 

Always  reticent  in  personal  matters,  few  except  the 
members  of  her  own  family  knew  of  the  attack  of  a  painful 
and  mortal  disease,  which  advanced  steadily  until,  after 
a  few  months  of  uncomplaining  suffering,  she  passed  to 
her  reward.  The  rector  of  Grace  Church,  Dr.  William 
Reed  Huntington,  conducted  the  funeral  service  at  her 
residence,^  and  she  was  buried  beside  her  husband  in 
Mount  Auburn  Cemetery,  Cambridge.  Left  a  widow 
at  twenty  for  her  country's  sake,  Mrs.  Lowell  had  for 
forty  years,  with  consecrated  purpose,  waged  a  continual 
battle  against  ignorance,  vice,  and  crime ;  and  in  the  effort 
to  right  the  wrong  had  unflinchingly,  with  clear  eyes  and 
a  tender  heart,  followed  where  duty  seemed  to  lead.  This 
was  a  sure  preparation  for  her  saintly  and  heroic  end. 
We  who  shared  in  her  work  now  hold  her  in  loving  and 
thankful  remembrance. 

One  of  the  most  interesting,  significant,  and  hopeful 
phenomena  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  birth  and 
growth  of  organized  philanthropy.  The  history  of  this 
world  movement  will  some  day  be  written,  and  the  his- 

*  Shortly  before  Mrs.  Lowell's  death,  she  moved  to  43  East  Sixty- 
fourth  Street  because  the  erection  of  high  business  buildings  had  shut 
out  the  light  and  air  from  her  residence  in  Thirtieth  Street. 


60  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

torian  cannot  fail  to  make  prominent  mention  in  it  of 
five  women,  all  of  the  English-speaking  race,  leaders  in 
as  many  benevolent  crusades,  whose  humane  activities 
were  embraced  within  its  span. 

Elizabeth  Fry,^  under  whose  dauntless  leadership  the 
prisons  and  jails  of  Great  Britain  were  reformed  in  its 
opening  years,  will  first  command  his  praise.  Nor  will 
he  neglect  to  pay  tributes  to  the  humane  services  of  two 
heroic  women  who  simultaneously,  toward  the  middle  of 
the  century,  successfully  contended  against  official  igno- 
rance and  neglect  in  hospital  management.  One  of  these 
was  Florence  Nightingale, ^  whose  ministrations  in  the  field 
hospitals  of  the  Crimea  not  only  brought  relief  to  the  thou- 
sands of  wounded  and  dying  soldiers  there,  but  also  devel- 
oped the  profession  through  which  women  trained  nurses 
have  come,  with  their  skilled  and  gentle  services,  to  cheer 
and  relieve  the  sick  and  wounded,  and  comfort  the  dying  of 
the  civilized  world.  The  other  was  our  own  country- 
woman Dorothea  Lynde  Dix,^  the  early  apostle  of  State 
care  for  the  insane,  whose  labors  in  this  cause  were  brought 
to  a  successful  issue  in  twenty  states  and  in  Canada. 

Of  the  women  who  rendered  distinguished  service  to  hu- 
manity during  the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  Octavia 
Hill,^  the  devoted  English  woman  whose  long,  unselfish, 
and  intelligent  efforts  for  the  improvement  of  the  homes 

1  Elizabeth  Fry,  an  English  Quaker  minister  and  prison  reformer, 
1780-1845. 

2  Daughter  of  William  E.  Nightingale  of  Derbyshire,  England,  1820- 
1910. 

'  Born  in  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  1802 ;  died,  1887. 

*  Still  living  at  Marylebone  Road,  N.  W.  London,  in  1910. 


THE  WORKER  61 

of  the  London  poor,  continued  into  the  twentieth  century, 
have  inspired  an  army  of  settlement  workers  to  follow 
in  her  footsteps,  will  surely  receive  the  commendation 
so  richly  deserved.  On  the  shining  roll  will  be  emblazoned 
also  for  generations  yet  unborn,  the  name  and  fame  of  the 
*^ City's  Saint"  of  New  York,  the  story  of  some  of  whose 
charitable  undertakings  this  volume  all  too  imperfectly 
narrates.  Should  the  judgment  of  the  future  historian 
accord  with  the  estimate  now  entertained  by-  those  best 
acquainted  with  Mrs.  Lowell's  work,  he  will  claim  as  her 
most  useful  achievement  the  success  of  her  long  labors 
to  rescue  the  erring  and  feeble-minded  of  her  sex.  She 
early  recognized  the  temptations  and  dangers  to  which 
yoimg  women  of  wa3rward  tendencies  or  defective  will 
were  exposed,  all  the  more  severe  in  the  metropoUs  be- 
cause of  the  swiftly  changing  social  conditions,  floodtide 
of  immigration,  and  congested  population  centering  there, 
and  devoted  years  of  her  life  to  secure  them  refuges. 

When,  as  the  result  of  her  indomitable  championship 
of  their  needs,  the  State  of  New  York,  in  1878  estabUshed 
the  first  custodial  asylum  for  feeble-minded  women  in  the 
United  States,  if  not  in  the  world,  and  in  1881  the  first 
house  of  refuge  for  women  in  the  State,  thus  adopting 
as  wards  of  the  State  all  young  women  of  these  classes 
needing  its  care,  Mrs.  Lowell's  greatest  victory  for  hu- 
manity was  won.  Since  that  time,  other  states  and 
countries,  following  the  example  set  by  New  York,  have 
opened  similar  doors  erf  hope  and  shelter  to  thousands  of 
young  women,  all  of  whom,  and  multitudes  besides,  have 
reason  to  bless  the  name  of  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 


CHAPTER  V 

Letteks  to  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw 

For  many  years  Mrs.  Lowell  carried  on  an  affectionate 
correspondence  with  her  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Robert  Gould 
Shaw  —  the  Annie  Haggerty  of  her  girlhood  diary,  who 
after  long  residence  as  an  invalid  abroad  died  in  Boston 
in  1907.  Mrs.  Shaw  preserved  many  of  Mrs.  LowelFs 
letters,  from  some  of  which  extracts  are  here  tran- 
scribed, as  they  exhibit  not  only  varying  phases  of  her 
character,  but  also  give  her  opinion  of  some  pubUc 
men,  and  explain  her  reasons  for  undertaking  different 
kinds  of  philanthropic  work.  A  few  other  letters  to  Mrs. 
Shaw  are  reserved  for  insertion  in  following  chapters,  for 
which  they  seem  particularly  appropriate. 

West  New  Brighton,  June  17,  1878. 
Dearest  Annie: 

I  have  got  home  today  from  what  has  been  an  interest- 
ing and  busy  little  journey  of  a  week. 

Last  Monday  I  left  here  at  eight  and  went,  by  train,  to 
Binghamton,  arriving  at  5  p.m.  I  at  once  procured  a 
buggy  and  went  off  two  miles  to  visit  an  Inebriate  Asylum 
and  stayed  till  eight,  when  the  Superintendent  drove  me 
back  to  my  boarding  house.  Tuesday  at  nine  I  called 
on  a  lady  on  business  (about  poorhouse  work),  and  then 
went  off  to  a  Convention  of  Superintendents  of  the  Poor ; 

62 


LETTERS  TO  MRS.  ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW  63 

there  were  about  a  hundred,  I  should  think,  and  I  was 
the  sole  and  solitary  woman !  They  talked  away  until 
twelve,  when  we  scattered  for  dinner  and  returned  at  two 
and  stayed  till  five.  There  were  some  other  ladies  there 
then,  so  it  was  pleasanter  —  in  the  morning  I  felt  as  Robbie 
Barlow  did  once  at  the  circus,  when  a  great  many  guns 
were  fired  off,  and  he  kept  ejaculating :  '^  Oh,  I  wished  I 
hadn't  came !    I  wished  I  hadn't  came  !" 

At  five  I  drove  out  to  an  Orphan  Asylum,  with  one  of 
the  Managers,  and  then  to  his  house  to  tea  and  back  again 
to  the  convention,  where  again  there  were  no  other  ladies, 
and  where  I  addressed  the  meeting  on  the  subject  of 
tramps.  A  little  after  ten  the  session  came  to  an  end,  but 
the  next  morning  at  nine,  they  were  at  it  again  and  sat 
until  twelve.  Then  I  got  my  dinner  and  at  one  went  off 
in  a  buggy  to  the  Poorhouse  and  there  remained  for  a 
couple  of  hours  —  came  back  and  took  the  train  at  4 :  30 
for  Rochester  to  attend  the  meeting  of  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  on  Thursday.  Luckily  for  me  several  of  the 
members  were  on  the  train,  for  we  were  left  and  never  got 
in  until  one  o'clock  a.m.  !  Thursday  we  were  in  session 
13  hours,  with  one  hour  for  dinner  and  one  for  tea  and  I 
got  to  bed  about  twelve  o'clock.  Friday  I  spent  the 
morning  at  a  Reformatory  and  at  4 :  30  left  for  Syracuse, 
reaching  there  at  7,  when  I  went  straight  to  the  asylum 
—  went  all  over  the  house  and  saw  the  children  in  bed. 
Next  day  I  was  up  at  six  and  saw  them  at  breakfast  and 
after  breakfast  I  went  all  over  the  institution  and  saw  the 
schools  and  left  for  New  York  at  eleven  and  got  to  Thirtieth 
St.  at  7  P.M. 

July  9,  '82. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

******* 

Bob  Minturn  began  to  talk  to  a  colored  man  on  the 
horse-cars  the  other  day  at  Cambridge  and  found  he  had 


64  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

been  in  Rob's  regiment.  He  said:  '^Our  Colonel  wasn't 
like  dem  colonels  dat  says:  'Now,  boys,  go  and  take 
dat  fort  and  I'll  stay  just  hyar '  —  No,  our  Colonel  says : 
'  Now,  boys,  dere's  Rebs  in  dat  fort ;  will  you  follow  me  ? ' 
And  we  pokes  out  our  heads  and  says :   '  Yes  sah  ! 


} }) 


(Date  missing.     Written  early  in  '85.) 
Dearest  Annie  : 

^  Ht  ^  ^  ^  ^  H: 

On  the  train  coming  from  Albany  Thursday,  I  had  a 
long  talk  with  Theodore  Roosevelt  about  politics.  He 
acknowledges  that  the  best  part  of  the  Republican  party 
supported  Cleveland,  and  I  think  his  reasons  for  vot- 
ing for  Blaine  are  rather  mixed,  but  he  is  so  young 
that  he  will  get  over  the  bad  effect  and  will  do  good  ser- 
vice yet. 

He  said  he  couldn't  help  wishing  he  was  "  in  the  fight  " 
when  he  goes  to  Albany,  but  it  was  a  wise  thing  to  refuse 
renomination  under  the  circumstances,  because,  otherwise, 
everybody  would  have  said  more  even  than  they  did  that 
it  was  his  political  ambition  that  dictated  his  course.  He 
is  going  to  work  in  the  State  Charities  Aid  this  winter 
and  do  some  writing.  He  has  quite  a  literary  turn,  you 
know.  He  says  his  baby  is  as  sweet  as  can  be.  Anna 
Roosevelt  takes  care  of  her.     She  is  nearly  a  year  old. 

120  E.  30th  St.,  Feb.  12,  '88. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

Here  during  the  week,  at  the  MetropoUtan  Opera  House, 
we  have  been  having  the  "  Trilogy"  and  heaps  of  Boston 
people  have  come  on  to  hear  them.  I  am  going  to  give 
you  a  list  of  the  friends  we  had  here  yesterday.  Friday, 
Howard  White  slept  here  so  he  was  at  breakfast.  At  10 
—  young  lady  from  Iowa  on  business;    at   11  —  Amy 


LETTERS  TO  MRS.  ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW  65 

White  and  Lucy  Russell ;  at  1  —  Rose  Howard  (from 
Brookline)  she  and  Amy  to  lunch ;  at  4  —  Nannie  Cod- 
man  ;  at  4.30  —  Mrs.  Wister  and  two  young  cousins  of 
hers,  McAllisters ;  at  5  —  May  Minturn  and  at  6  — 
G.  W.  C.  (Nannie,  May  and  George  to  dinner) ;  at  8  — 
Rob  Minturn;  at  8.30  — Mr.  and  Mrs.  Burlingham  — 
and  it  was  snowing  and  sleeting  all  day !  On  Thursday 
I  had  a  very  different  kind  of  a  day,  but  equally  lively  — 
I  will  rehearse  its  history. 

At  10.30  I  went  to  our  ^^ Charity  Woodyard"  at  19th 
Street  and  Ave.  B.,  at  12  to  32  Nassau  Street,  to  meet 
Mrs.  Barney  from  R.  I.  and  four  gentlemen  of  the  Prison 
Assn.  to  talk  over  Police  Matron  Law ;  at  1.30  —  to  office 
of  my  colleague,  Mr.  Stewart,  and  then  to  lunch  with 
him  at  a  down  town  restaurant ;  at  2.30  to  the  C.  O.  S. 
office  and  received  ^'applicants"  —  at  the  same  moment 
came  in  two  men  from  Canada  and  a  man  from  Florida  — 
all  three  had  come  with  money  to  look  for  work  and  had 
spent  it  all  and  needed  help !  At  4.30  —  to  my  Com- 
mittee meeting  —  two  ladies  and  six  men  and  most  lively 
discussions,  and  at  5.30  home !  I  had  a  most  interesting 
day,  of  course. 

George  was  here  Tuesday  night  and  again  last  night 
on  his  way  to  and  from  Boston.  He  had  been  invited 
to  a  dinner  by  the  '' Tavern  Club'^  and  had  a  beautiful 
time.  The  members  are  all  young  professional  men  and 
the  only  ''old  ones''  were  Charles  Norton,  Harry  Lee, 
Mr.  Osgood,  Henry  Higginson,  Uncle  James  Lowell  and 
George.  Mr.  Norton  presided  and  made  a  most  eulogistic 
speech  about  George  —  as  the  principal  guest  —  to  this 
George  responded,  and  then  Uncle  James  read  a  poem  to 
George,  which  is  to  be  published  soon.  George  says  it  is 
"the  greatest  honor  of  his  fife."  There  was  much  clap- 
ping and  cheering  and  then  music  and  then  an  end. 


66  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

March  18,  '88. 
Dearest  Annie: 

I  have  sent  you  some  little  accounts  of  our  *' Blizzard '^ 
—  and  suppose  yoiu"  Semi-Weekly  Evening  Post  will  tell 
you  the  story.  It  was  really  the  most  amazing  storm 
we  have  ever  had  here  —  Monday  no  one  went  down 
town  —  there  were  no  trains,  no  horse  cars,  no  mail,  no 
way  of  getting  out.  May  Minturn  was  in  Philadelphia 
(just  to  see  Gertrude)  meaning  to  come  home  Monday, 
and  it  was  not  until  Friday  morning  that  she  could  come  ! 
Edith  was  at  the  Codmans'  in  Boston  and  she  has  not 
come  yet.  We  had  no  milk  from  Monday  to  Friday,  and 
had  to  live  on  condensed  milk  and  were  lucky  to  get  that, 
as  our  grocer  went  out  of  it  Tuesday  and  the  streets  were 
so  packed  with  snow  that  it  could  not  be  brought  up  town. 
However,  now  things  are  all  right  again  —  every  one 
turned  to  on  Tuesday  and  the  sidewalks  were  cleared  and 
on  Wednesday  all  the  gutters  and  culverts  had  been 
opened  and  Thursday  and  Friday  and  Saturday  the  snow 
had  been  melting  pretty  steadily.  I  was  told  that  men 
made  from  $10.  to  $20.  on  Tuesday  shovelling  snow,  and 
Mother  paid  $6.  —  for  the  work  Monday,  Tuesday  and 
Wednesday,  in  front  of  these  Uttle  houses. 

On  Thursday  George  came  up  to  pass  the  night  and 
we  went  that  afternoon  to  the  reception  to  Mr.  Irving, 
of  which  I  send  you  an  account.  It  was  very  interesting 
and  Mr.  Irving  appeared  very  well.  George  told  us 
thrilling  tales  of  the  storm  on  the  Island  —  how  one  gentle- 
man (Mr.  K.  his  opposite  neighbor)  went  to  St.  George 
to  take  the  morning  boat,  found  none  and  stayed  all 
day  at  the  station,  the  storm  being  too  severe  to  go 
home.  And  how  another  of  our  friends,  who  did  get 
to  town  earlier,  was  foolish  enough  to  come  back  by  a 
late  boat  and  spent  the  night  at  the  station !    Anna  was^ 


LETTERS  TO  MRS.  ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW  67 

of  course,  most  interested  in  the  storm  and  could  not  re- 
sist going  out  to  do  a  little  sweeping  of  the  piazza  in  the 
midst  of  it. 

Have  you  followed  the  new  Emperor's  ^  course  with  the 
pleasure  that  we  feel?  It  is  a  most  pathetic  situation, 
isn't  it  —  this  man  under  sentence  of  death,  working  to 
do  what  he  can  in  the  short  time  before  him  —  it  gives 
all  he  does  and  says  a  sacredness. 

March  3,  '89. 
Dearest  Annie: 

******* 

Today  is  Mr.  Cleveland's  last  day  as  President,  a  real 
misfortune  to  this  country,  I  truly  believe.  He  has  stood, 
a  firm  rock,  opposed  to  the  folly  and  extravagance  of 
Congress  and  his  very  last  veto  (of  a  bill  to  pay  back  to 
the  states  a  war  tax  of  1861  !)  is  perfectly  splendid  —  so 
wise  and  clear  and  full  of  principle.  He  is  a  great  man 
and  a  true  patriot. 

Naples,  May  7,  '92. 
Dearest  Annie: 

We  took  the  most  beautiful  drive  to  Sorrento.  The 
weather  was  heavenly  and  the  blue  sky  and  blue  mountains 
were  like  a  dream,  so  soft,  so  misty,  so  indescribable. 
The  two  girls  were  enchanted  with  Sorrento  and  we  stayed 
there  until  Friday,  taking  the  Capri  excursion  by  steamer 
Thursday.  Our  windows  hung  over  the  water  almost, 
and  Venus  set  opposite  to  Vesuvius  and  into  the  Bay, 
upon  which  the  moon,  from  behind  out  of  sight,  cast  a 
most  mysterious  white  light. 

1  Frederick  III,  Emperor  of  Germany,  and  King  of  Prussia,  March 
9-June  15,  1888. 


68  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Florence,  May  21,  '92. 

Dearest  Annie: 

We  have  been  in  Florence  ten  days  now  and  I  find  it  as 
lovable  as  ever.  We  lived  here  two  winters,  once  in  the 
Casa  Ricasoli,  now  taken  down,  just  at  the  corner  of  the 
Carraja  Bridge,  and  once  in  the  Villa  Lustrini,  near  the 
Porta  Romana,  so  I  feel  much  at  home  here.  We  are 
now  at  the  other  end  of  the  Bridge,  on  the  North  side,  so 
it  is  cool  and  lovely  all  day  and  we  see  the  hills  and  the 
Duomo  and  Campanile  and  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  tower, 
with  the  river  at  our  feet.  It  is  beautiful. 
'  We  go  out  in  the  afternoons  here  and  drive  in  the  en- 
virons. Such  beautiful  views  —  the  only  drawback  being 
that  our  dinner  is  at  seven  and  interferes  with  the  sunset. 
The  other  day  we  got  them  to  give  it  to  us  at  six  and  then 
went  to  the  Cascine  in  the  train  and  then  up  to  the  Piazzale 
Michael  Angelo,  near  San  Miniato.  The  City,  lighted 
under  oin-  feet,  with  the  river  glancing  all  through  the 
valley,  was  most  beautiful. 


London,  Sept.  3,  '92. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

You  have  seen  that  all  our  hopes  were  in  vain  and  that 
our  dear  George  died  on  the  31st.  George  is  an  awful 
loss  to  us.  He  has  been  a  constant  happiness  to  us  for 
more  than  thirty  seven  years  —  never  a  break  or  an 
unpleasant  thought  or  word  has  come  between  us.  As 
Lotta  says  :  '^  Besides  our  loving  him  so  much,  he  was  the 
life  of  everything." 

Well,  dearest  Annie,  Goodbye  —  it  must  be  one  loss 
after  another  to  the  end  —  Goodbye. 


LETTERS  TO  MRS.   ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW     69 

West  New  Brighton,  Jan.  7,  '93. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

Last  Sunday,  after  I  had  written  to  you,  Mr.  Saint 
Gaudens  came  down  to  look  at  Rob's  pictures.  He  is 
full  of  enthusiasm  about  the  monument,  which  he  has 
decided  is  to  be  as  follows  :  A  great  bas-relief,  12  ft.  x  14 
ft.,  the  background  a  mass  of  soldiers  with  muskets  and 
bayonets,  and  Rob  on  horseback  riding  beside  them,  his 
figure  and  the  horse  pretty  much  filling  the  whole  space, 
life  size. 

March  5,  1893. 
Dearest  Annie: 

Last  night  mother  had  an  inauguration  dinner,  —  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Charles  S.  Fairchild,  her  mother,  Mrs.  Lincklaen 
(Gov.  Seymour's  sister)  and  Mrs.  George  Ward.  We 
had  each  a  small  flag,  and  coffee  out  of  Uncle  Sam  Shaw's 
Cincinnati  cups.  You  know  Mr.  Fairchild  took  the  most 
prominent  part  in  the  movement  against  Hill  last  spring. 
He  told  me  that  Mrs.  Fairchild  started  him  by  asking 
him  what  he  meant  to  do  about  it,  and  by  her  scorn  when 
he  said  he  didn't  know.  He  remarked  that  he  had  to  go 
out  that  evening,  and  she  told  him  that  he  had  better  go 
and  stay  until  he  found  out  what  to  do  !  He  thereupon 
set  to  work  and  he  and  others  gave  the  first  impetus  to 
the  great  popular  movement  that  nominated  Cleveland. 
He  said  when  they  came  back  from  Chicago,  Mr.  Cleve- 
land wrote  him  that  the  work  of  the  convention  ''would 
be  the  admiration  of  all  men  who  believe  in  morals  as  a 
force  in  politics,  and  the  wonder  of  all  who  do  not.'' 

120  E.  30th  St.,  Nov.  26,  '93. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

Mr.  Saint  Gaudens  was  delighted  to  find  the  photo- 
graphs of  Dick,  and  said  he  was  just  the  horse  he  wanted, 


70  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  he  thought  Rob's  pictures  were  beautiful.  He  very 
much  wants  a  suit  of  clothes  —  have  you  any  ?  Coat, 
trousers,  shoes,  would  all  be  useful.  Mother  has  only 
the  cap  and  overcoat,  you  know.  He  was  much  pleased 
to  have  the  little  photograph  with  you,  because  it  shows 
the  whole  figure  and  the  proportions.  He  says  Rob  was 
always  a  great  hero  of  his,  and  that  he  feels  that  this  is 
the  best  chance  he  shall  ever  have  to  do  anything  great. 
Mother  did  not  like  the  idea  of  having  a  monument,  you 
know,  but  she  is  very  much  pleased,  likes  Mr.  Saint 
Gaudens  (who  is  very  simple  and  unaffected)  and  also 
the  little  rough  sketch  he  has  made  for  the  monument. 
I  wish  Father  could  have  seen  it  —  he  would  have  been 
pleased,  too,  I  am  sure. 

Feb.  25,  '94. 

Dearest  Annie  : 

I  wonder  if  you  are  much  disturbed  about  the  bomb- 
throwers?  What  a  crazy,  dreadful  set  of  creatures,  and 
how  all  the  newspaper  talk  only  serves  to  set  off  some  other 
lunatic  to  do  the  same  thing.  Certainly  the  modern 
newspaper  is  a  very  ^^ mixed  good."  The  view  a  reporter 
takes  of  things  is  generally  the  wrong  view,  but  it  helps 
to  make  public  opinion.  Well,  there's  no  use  talking 
about  it — only  I  am  glad  you  and  Aunt  Anna  Greene  do 
not  take  your  dinner  at  a  cafe. 

120  East  30th  St.,  Sept.  25,  '98. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

We  (I  especially)  are  most  intensely  interested  in 
Theodore  Roosevelt's  campaign  for  Governor  —  it  is  a 
misfortune  that  it  is  a  '^machine"  nomination,  but  the 
fact  is  that  the  popular  demand  forced  it  on  the  machine, 
and  it  really  is  a  triumph  over  Piatt,  although  he  supports 


LETTERS  TO  MRS.  ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW   71 

it.  Mr.  Roosevelt  has  done  great  service  in  every  place 
he  has  held,  and  his  moral  tone  acts  like  a  tonic  wherever 
he  is.  He  has  tremendous  force  and  life  in  him,  and  many- 
people,  who  never  do  anything  themselves,  complain  of 
him  as  lacking  '^judgment,''  but  I  think  the  results  of 
his  action  show  that  he  has  been  pretty  nearly  right 
every  time.  I  have  a  great  respect  and  admiration  for 
him  in  every  way.  For  six  years  he  was  U.  S.  Civil 
Service  Commissioner  and  did  fine  work,  and  it  is  said 
that  Dewey's  \dctory  at  Manilla  was  due  to  his  orders  when 
Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 


CHAPTER  VI 
Work  for  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association 

The  patriotic  work  of  the  Woman's  Central  Relief 
Association,  an  auxiliary  of  the  United  States  Sanitary 
Comnaission,  in  which  Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler,  Josephine 
Shaw,  Miss  Ellen  Collins,  Miss  Gertrude  Stevens,  and 
others  were  engaged,  has  already  been  mentioned.  Soon 
after  the  close  of  the  war,  many  of  its  contributing  societies 
in  New  York  State  were  reorganized  as  Visiting  Com- 
mittees for  the  public  charitable  institutions,  under  the 
leadership  of  Miss  Schuyler,  and  many  of  the  active  mem- 
bers of  the  Relief  Association  interested  themselves  in 
this  new  work.  From  these  Visiting  Committees  as  a 
nucleus,  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association  was  formed  in 
1872.  Mrs.  Lowell  immediately  joined  the  new  Associa- 
tion, and  soon  afterwards,  in  1873,  became  a  member  of 
the  Richmond  County  Visiting  Committee.  From  1875 
to  1876  she  was  successively  member,  secretary,  and  chair- 
man of  one  of  the  Association's  four  Standing  Committees, 
—  that  on  ''Adult  able-bodied  paupers,"  which  had  head- 
quarters in  New  York  City.  She  was  also  in  1876  elected 
a  member  of  the  Executive  Committee. 

The  Richmond  County  Poorhouse  near  Castleton,  on 
Staten  Island,  was  not  far  from  her  home,  and  Mrs.  Lowell 
made  herself  familiar  by  frequent  visits  with  its  condition, 
and  gave  her  practical  sympathy  continuously  to  its  aged 

72 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION     75 

inmates,  among  whose  average  population,  at  that  time  of 
about  one  hundred,  there  were  a  dozen  or  more  insane,, 
and  an  occasional  idiot,  epileptic,  or  blind  person. 

Under  her  chairmanship  of  the  Committee  on  ''Adult 
able-bodied  paupers,"  the  following  resolution  was  adopted  : 

''That  an  investigation  be  made  as  to  the  methods, 
expenses,  extent  and  results  of  poor  law  administration 
and  relief  in  the  several  towns  in  the  County  of  West- 
chester, with  a  view  of  ascertaining  how  near  the  same 
come  to  the  greatest  practical  efficiency  and  economy, 
and  that  the  investigation  extend  over  a  period  of  ten  years 
last  past/' 

The  time  to  be  covered  by  this  investigation  was 
afterwards  changed  to  include  the  years  from  1864  to 
1873,  and  the  burden  of  the  work  of  making  the  investiga- 
tion devolved  upon  Mrs.  Lowell,  who  also  wrote  the 
report  for  the  committee.  When  the  work  of  gathering 
statistics  was  undertaken,  in  part  by  local  correspondents, 
and  in  part  by  special  agents,  it  was  found  that  contrary 
to  the  express  provisions  of  the  law  no  records  were  kept 
in  most  of  the  towns  of  the  amount  spent  for  outdoor 
relief,  or  of  the  persons  relieved,  though  the  amounts 
appropriated,  as  shown  by  the  reports  of  the  Supervisors, 
were  very  considerable. 

In  regard  to  the  entertainment  of  tramps,  grave  abuses 
were  discovered.  Although  the  methods  varied  in  detail 
in  the  different  towns,  it  was  everywhere  true  that  tramps 
were  lodged  at  public  expense,  and  that  the  official  profits 
of  the  overseers  bore  a  direct  relation  to  the  number 
relieved.    Mrs.  Lowell  in  her  report  says : 


74  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

^^Each  overseer  is  thus  a  centre  of  pauperism  and  va- 
grancy and  his  interests  are  directly  opposed  to  those  of 
every  other  member  of  the  community,  the  paupers  and 
vagrants  included,  though  they  may  not  think  so.  .  .  . 
The  only  persons  who  have  any  official  relations  with 
pauperism  and  vagrancy  are  constantly  under  temptation 
to  foster  these  evils." 

The  report  suggests  that  the  remedy  may  be  found  in  a 
change  in  the  character  and  position  of  the  overseers, 
and  maintains  that  the  persons  receiving  aid  directly  from 
these  officials  should  not  help  to  elect  them,  that  their 
term  of  office  should  be  long  enough  to  enable  them  to 
gain  some  experience,  and  that  their  compensation  should 
not  depend  upon  the  number  of  paupers  and  vagrants 
whom  they  can  collect  around  them.  This  conclusion, 
based  upon  the  conditions  found  to  exist  in  Westchester 
County,  is  confirmed  and  supported  by  letters  from 
Superintendents  of  the  Poor  of  various  other  counties, 
to  whom  the  Committee  appealed  for  opinions. 

Although  Mrs.  Lowell  was  unavoidably  absent,  her 
report  was  presented  and  read  at  the  Fourth  Annual 
Meeting  of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  held  in 
Masonic  Temple,  on  the  corner  of  Twenty-third  Street 
and  Sixth  Avenue,  on  February  24,  1876.  The  President 
of  the  Association  at  this  time,  and  until  1882,  was 
Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler;  but  she  yielded  the  chair- 
manship of  the  annual  meeting  to  the  distinguished 
leader  of  the  New  York  bar  of  that  day,  Mr.  Charles 
O'Connor,  just  then  recovered  from  a  dangerous  illness. 
A  newspaper  report  of  the  meeting  in  a  city  paper  of  the 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION      75 

following  day  observes  that  the  large  and  brilliant  audience 
feared  that  the  great  lawyer  might  not  be  able  to  come. 
*'But  this  fear  was  dispelled  before  eight  o'clock  by  the 
appearance  at  the  foot  of  the  central  aisle  of  Mr.  O'Connor, 
accompanied  by  Governor  Tilden,  Dr.  Austin  FHnt,  Jr., 
and  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate.  As  soon  as  the  audience  was 
fully  aware  of  his  presence,  it  greeted  him  with  a  round  of 
hearty  applause."  Continuing  its  report  of  the  meeting, 
the  paper  noted  the  presence  on  the  platform,  besides 
those  named,  of  Howard  Potter,  Benjamin  H.  Field, 
James  Roosevelt,  John  Crosby  Brown,  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton, Jr.,  George  L.  Schuyler,  Robert  J.  Livingston,  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt,  member  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities, 
President  Barnard  of  Columbia  College,  and  others. 

After  brief  introductory  addresses  by  Mr.  Potter,  Vice 
President  of  the  Association,  and  Mr.  O'Connor,  in  which 
the  objects  of  the  association  were  commended  and  the 
public  invited  to  further  its  philanthropic  work,  the  princi- 
pal address  was  delivered  by  Mr.  Choate,  afterward,  from 
1895  to  1899,  President  of  the  Association,  and  reelected  to 
that  office  in  December,  1905,  upon  his  return  from  Eng- 
land. In  the  course  of  his  remarks,  he  congratulated  the 
Association  upon  the  presence  on  the  platform  of  the  dis- 
tinguished reform  governor,  and  in  the  inimitably  smooth, 
serio-comic  vein  for  which  he  was  already  famous,  said 
of  him : 

'^If,  Hke  Alexander,  he  is  seeking  new  worlds  to  con- 
quer, and  new  rings  to  break,  why,  if  he  will  lend  us 
his  ears  we  can  show  him  foemen  worthy  of  his  steel. 
We  can  point  him  out  hospital  rings,  and  poorhouse  rings, 


76  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

rings  of  overseers  of  the  poor  with  tramps  whom  they  will 
entertain,  rings  of  able-bodied  paupers  in  all  the  counties 
of  the  state.''  Changing  his  tone  to  one  entirely  serious 
he  continued:  '^The  association  found  what  is  known 
as  the  poorhouse  system  a  gross,  degrading,  abominable 
system  of  plague  spots  —  nothing  less,  dotted  throughout 
the  State,  one  assigned  to  each  of  the  sixty  counties. 
Children  and  abandoned  women,  the  old  and  the  youngs 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  sane  and  the  insane,  the  innocent 
and  the  criminal,  huddled  and  jumbled  together  into  these 
poorhouses,  to  the  complete  and  utter  degradation  and  de- 
struction of  all  of  them.  They  found  too,  throughout  the 
State,  able-bodied  paupers  as  if  by  special  legislative  en- 
actment, fostered  by  the  good  treatment  they  receive ;  they 
found  millions,  actually  miUions  of  money,  distributed  in 
outdoor  relief,  wasted,  thrown  away  upon  the  undeserving. 

^^Now  we  come  next  to  the  subject  of  able-bodied 
paupers.  That  is  a  grand  historical  subject.  I  do  not 
understand  how  these  women  grappled  with  it.  I  can 
see  verj'^  well  how  Mr.  Roosevelt,  or  Mr.  Schultz,  might 
underta-ke  to  grapple  with  one  sturdy  beggar.  But  here 
the  curiosity  of  women,  that  unfailing  tower  of  strength, 
comes  in.  They  proposed  to  find  out  the  facts,  and  in  the 
masterly  report  read  here  tonight,  signed  by  Mrs.  Lowell,, 
you  have  the  whole  subject. 

''What  do  we  find  in  this  report  of  Mrs.  Lowell  ?  That 
tramps  and  able-bodied  paupers  are  encouraged  in  their 
idleness  in  this  State.  Hotels,  open  houses,  are  kept 
for  them  by  overseers,  ring  politicians  who  dispense 
the  public  money  in  such  a  way  as  to  encourage  tramping. 
These  overseers  have  a  motive  for  this;  they  are  paid 
so  much  a  head  for  every  tramp  they  entertain.  If  they 
give  a  tramp  a  ten  cent  breakfast,  they  draw  twenty 
cents  from  the  State.     It  turns  out  that  they  have  realized 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION      77 

from  this  source  in  Westchester  County  more  than  the 
average  county  doctor  or  average  lawyer  in  that  county  I 
Well,  it  is  no  wonder  that  tramps  are  numerous." 

It  requires  Uttle  stretch  of  the  imagination,  even  after 
the  lapse  of  thirty  years,  to  think  what  must  have  been 
the  effect  upon  the  audience,  when,  toward  the  conclusion 
of  his  address,  Mr.  Choate  remarked:  '^The  Association 
is  adopting  Mr.  Greeley^s  views  and  saying  to  the  tramps 
^Go  West.'  Let  them  go  to  Montana,  and  Colorado, 
and  New  Mexico,  and  Washington,  and  Oregon.  The  soil 
is  pining  for  them ;  the  forests  are  waving  them  a  welcome ; 
the  rivers  are  waiting  to  wash  their  feet." 

Shortly  after  this  meeting.  Governor  Tilden,  who  had 
been  deeply  impressed  by  Mrs.  Lowell's  paper  and  her 
personaUty,  appointed  her  to  a  vacant  seat  on  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  whereupon  her  official  work  as  a 
member  of  the  Association  terminated. 

Many  years  later,  in  1895,  Mrs.  Lowell  delivered  the 
following  hitherto  unpublished  address,  to  the  members  of 
the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  in  which  she  described 
the  evils  existing  in  1872  in  the  poorhouses  and  jails  of 
New  York. 

County  Visiting  Committees 

Our  great  national  sin,  slavery,  was  answerable  for 
manifold  and  various  evils,  among  others  for  the  bar- 
barous condition  of  the  poorhouses  and  jails  of  our  country, 
so  far  behind  those  of  other  civilized  nations.  The  thirty 
years  during  which  reforms  were  steadily  growing  else- 
where, were  here  devoted  by  the  reformers  to  the  one 


78  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

great  fight;  it  absorbed  all  their  time  and  strength,  and 
meanwhile  all  lesser  evils  took  firm  root. 

As  soon  as  the  war  was  over,  however,  and  strength 
could  be  gathered  for  fresh  work,  these  lesser  evils  were 
attacked,  and  in  this  State  especially,  the  very  men  and 
women  who  had  contended  against  slavery,  and  who  later 
had  '^enhsted  for  the  war"  under  the  Sanitary  Commis- 
sion were  gathered  together  again  by  their  old  leaders  for 
the  new  fight. 

The  reports  made  of  the  condition  of  the  poorhouses  of 
New  York  in  the  fifties  and  sixties  seem  scarcely  credible 
—  insane  men  and  women,  chained  naked  in  outhouses ; 
children  born,  growing  up  and  bringing  forth  more  chil- 
dren in  the  poorhouses;  the  sick,  the  insane,  the  idiots, 
the  babies,  men,  women  and  children,  all  together,  with 
no  care  and  no  control ;  the  whole  thing  was  frightful. 

The  decent  people  living  in  the  counties  in  which  these 
horrors  existed  knew  nothing  of  them ;  never  for  a  mo- 
ment felt  that  they  had  any  obligation  towards  the  poor 
creatures  within  those  dreadful  buildings,  or  any  interest 
in  cutting  off  the  stream  of  misery,  pauperism,  vice  and 
crime  that  had  its  rise  within  their  walls.  The  State  had 
been  roused  and  shocked  by  the  horrors  depicted  by  Dr. 
Willard  and  Miss  Dix,  to  the  point  of  establishing  an 
asylum  for  the  chronic  insane,^  but  very  much  the  same 
things  went  on,  after  the  asylum  was  full  to  overflowing, 
the  individual  sufferers  only  being  changed,  and  the 
pubhc  was  quite  satisfied  that  its  duty  was  done. 

1  The  Willard  Asylum,  established  1865,  at  Willard,  Seneca  County, 
New  York,  and  opened  October  13,  1869. 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION     79 

The  State  Board  of  Charities  was  established  in  1867, 
and  among  its  manifold  duties  was  that  of  visiting  the 
county  poorhouses  once  in  every  two  years.  There  were 
fifty-eight  poorhouses  and  only  eight  Commissioners, 
but  nevertheless  they  have  done  good  service  in  discover- 
ing and  reporting  many  fearful  evils.  Still  their  work 
would  have  been  slow  indeed  had  not  Miss  Louisa  Lee 
Schuyler  organized  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association 
to  carry  on  a  more  constant,  thorough  and  continued  at- 
tack through  its  County  Visiting  Committees. 

Beginning  with  her  own  county  of  Westchester  in 
January,  1872,  and  the  Belle vue  Visiting  Committee  for 
New  York,  before  the  Association  itself  was  formed.  Miss 
Schuyler  established  a  system,  which  during  the  past 
twenty-three  years  has  done  untold  good  and  been  the 
cause  of  an  incalculable  gain  to  the  State  and  its  people 
in  many  different  ways. 

The  plan  was  a  simple  one :  to  form  in  each  county  a 
local  committee  for  the  purpose  of  visiting  the  county 
poorhouse,  encouraging  county  officials  in  a  conscientious 
discharge  of  their  duties,  detecting  and  remedying  wrongs, 
securing  the  moral  and  physical  welfare  of  the  inmates 
and  gradually  bringing  the  whole  poorhouse  administra- 
tion up  to  a  civiUzed  standard,  which  I  think  it  safe  to 
say  was  nowhere  found  in  this  State  in  the  year  1872  or 
for  many  long  years  thereafter. 

The  worst  poorhouse  I  ever  saw  myself  was  in  one  of 
the  central  counties  of  the  State,  and  an  irresistibly 
grotesque  element  was  added  to  its  horrors  by  the  naive 
hospitaUty  with  which  the  good-natured  superintendent 


80  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

showed  us  the  sights ;  from  the  very  clean  dairy,  of  which 
he  was  proud,  to  the  filthy  bunk,  of  which  he  was  not 
ashamed,  where  ^'John  pigged  in'^  as  he  expressed  it. 
'^Yes,"  he  explained,  as  he  poked  at  the  bundle  of  rags 
covering  John,  ^'he's  half-witted  and  he'll  swear  awful 
if  you  stir  him  up.  —  Here  !  John  !  John  !"  Then  as 
we  hurriedly  escaped  from  John  and  the  broken  plaster, 
black  laths  and  bedbugs  of  the  poorhouse  itself,  into  the 
yard  surrounded  by  broken-down  outhouses,  and  asked 
about  a  miserable  family,  man,  woman  and  three  young 
children  sitting  there,  he  answered:  ^'Oh!  theyVe  been 
here  about  four  or  five  years.  Oh,  yes,  them  children,  the 
two  littlest  was  born  here." 

It  was  evident  that  he  had  no  doubts  in  regard  to  any 
part  of  his  dominion,  and  no  idea  that  there  was  room  or 
reason  for  improvement.  In  many  poorhouses,  to  this 
condition  of  things  was  added  also  neglect  and  cruelty, 
and  it  has  been  a  long  and  weary  task,  not  yet  finished, 
to  instruct  local  public  opinion  as  to  what  common  decency 
and  common  sense  demand  in  a  poorhouse,  and  to  arouse 
public  opinion  to  secure  it.  As  usual,  in  our  unhappy 
State,  ^' politics'^  is  at  the  bottom  of  these  evils  as  of  most 
others,  and  this  too  has  rendered  the  task  of  the  local 
Committees  much  harder  to  accomplish. 

But  in  1893,  after  twenty-one  years  of  work,  the  Associ- 
ation was  able  to  write  concerning  its  County  Visiting 
Committees  : 

"The  central  idea  of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association 
is  the  visitation  of  public  charitable  institutions  by  unpaid, 
unofficial  local  visitors.    To  this  end  it  aims  to  organize 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION     81 

in  every  county  a  Local  Visiting  Committee,  unsectarian, 
non-partisan,  composed  of  both  men  and  women,  includ- 
ing representatives  of  various  professions  and  occupa- 
tions, thus  claiming  fairly  to  represent  the  people  of  the 
county,  and  collectively  the  people  of  the  entire  State. 
In  forty-eight  of  the  sixty  counties  of  the  State  there  now 
exist  such  Visiting  Committees,  with  a  roll  of  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  members.  During  the  ten  months  ending 
September  30,  1893,  thirty-two  committees  have  made 
two  hundred  and  twenty-five  visits  to  the  poorhouses  and 
almshouses  of  the  State,  exclusive  of  the  very  large  num- 
ber of  visits  made  by  the  Committee  of  New  York  County. 
These  figures  can  convey  but  little  impression  of  the  work 
which  they  represent.  To  appreciate  their  real  meaning 
one  must  accompany  a  group  of  these  workers  on  their 
visit  to  the  poorhouse,  note  the  minuteness  and  thorough- 
ness of  their  examinations,  the  evident  harmony  and  spirit 
of  cooperation  that  exists  between  those  in  charge  of  the 
institutions  and  the  visitors,  the  brightness  which  lights 
up  the  faces  of  the  inmates  as  one  by  one  they  are  pleas- 
antly greeted  by  the  visitors  with  kindly  words  and  often 
presented  with  a  paper  or  book,  the  consultation  between 
the  visitors  and  those  in  charge  as  to  what  should  be  done 
with  some  new  arrival  whose  case  deserves  special  atten- 
tion, how  this  or  that  difficulty  may  be  adjusted,  and 
observe  that  evils  that  cannot  be  remedied  under  exist- 
ing conditions  are  noted  by  the  secretary  and  reported 
to  the  Central  Association.  Bearing  in  mind  that  these 
visits  are  made  by  these  same  people  at  varying  intervals 
throughout  the  year,  and  that  in  forty-seven  other  coun- 
ties this  sort  of  work  is  being  done  with  more  or  less 
regularity,  we  may  thus  form  a  truer  conception  of  the 
tremendous  step  that  has  been  taken  by  the  State  Charities 
Aid  Association,  not  only  toward  bringing  the  public 


82  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

charitable  institutions  to  a  high  standard  of  efficiency, 
but  also  toward  bridging  the  chasm  between  the  fortunate 
and  the  most  unfortunate,  toward  developing  that  truest 
of  all  charity,  personal  interest  in  persons. 

"  At  the  time  of  the  organization  of  the  Association,  in 
1872,  so  many  flagrant  evils  existed  in  the  almhouses,  the 
results  of  bad  systems  and  no  oversight,  that  the  work 
of  the  committees  was  in  many  cases  necessarily  largely 
in  the  line  of  correcting  active  abuses  of  various  kinds. 
At  the  present  time  it  may  be  said  that  in  most  of  the 
counties  comparatively  little  remains  to  be  done  in  this 
line.  The  removal  of  the  insane  and  the  children  has  done 
away  with  the  occasion  of  many  of  the  most  serious  evils. 
There  has  also  been  a  steady  improvement  in  the  con- 
struction and  arrangement  of  buildings,  the  separation 
of  the  sexes,  cleanliness  of  inmates  and  provision  for  read- 
ing and  amusement.  Much  indeed  remains  to  be  done, 
but  in  only  rare  cases  is  it  in  the  line  of  correcting  the  old- 
time  abuses.  For  this  reason  there  has  been  a  tendency 
on  the  part  of  a  few  of  the  committees  to  relax  their  efforts 
and  cease  visiting,  or  to  visit  less  frequently.  In  most 
cases,  however,  a  broader  view  of  the  work  is  being  taken. 
The  merely  negative  side  of  the  work  of  visitation  and 
inspection  is,  after  all,  the  least  important.  A  wide  and 
ever  increasing  field  of  positive  constructive  work  opens 
before  such  a  body  of  local  workers  in  every  county.  The 
study  of  the  causes  of  dependency  through  the  history  of 
individual  inmates,  which  in  some  counties  has  been  un- 
dertaken, leads  to  a  truer  conception  of  the  real  nature  of 
the  poorhouse  and  who  should  be  its  inmates,  and  a  deeper 
sense  of  personal  responsibility  for  the  well-being  of  the 
merely  unfortunate  inmate  and  the  reformation,  if  possible, 
of  the  pauper.  Such  a  sense  of  personal  responsibility 
may  find  a  wide  field  for  exercise  not  only  in  the  improve- 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID  ASSOCIATION     83 

ment  of  the  lot  of  the  inmates  of  the  poorhouse,  but  also 
in  the  visitation  and  supervision  of  dependent  children 
who  have  been  placed  in  families  by  officials,  the  after- 
care of  the  insane,  and,  in  general,  a  personal  oversight 
and  befriending  of  all  who  for  any  reason  have  needed 
special  care  or  treatment,  which  has,  for  the  time,  deprived 
them  of  normal  relations  to  family,  home  and  neighbor- 
hood.^' 

One  very  encouraging  and  interesting  fact  in  regard  to 
the  visiting  committees  is  that  their  personnel  has  con- 
tinued without  great  change,  except  by  death  or  change 
of  residence,  from  the  time  of  their  organization. 

Besides  their  own  work  of  visiting  the  poorhouses, 
many  of  these  committees  have  become  the  centres  of 
local  charitable  work,  and  many  individual  members  having 
been  led  first  by  their  membership  in  these  committees 
to  study  the  grave  questions  of  pauperism  and  crime, 
have  extended  their  work  in  other  directions,  accomplish- 
ing good  in  fields  outside  and  far  removed  from  those 
nominally  covered  by  the  work  of  the  State  Charities 
Aid  Association. 

The  founding  of  the  Working  Girls'  Clubs  by  Miss  Grace 
Dodge  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  instances  of  this,  and 
also  the  establishment  of  the  Hospital  Book  and  News- 
paper Society,  and  the  society  for  Instruction  in  First  Aid 
to  the  Injured ;  the  establishing  of  the  Bellevue  Training 
School  for  Nurses  by  the  Hospital  Committee  of  the  New 
York  County  Committee  of  the  Association  is  directly  in 
the  line  of  the  work  of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Associa- 
tion, and  has   blessed  many  people    who    never  heard 


84  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  never  saw, 
and  never  will  see,  the  inside  of  a  public  institution  even 
as  visitors,  while  it  has  conferred  untold  benefits  upon 
the  inmates  of  hospitals  all  over  the  country.  The 
work  of  the  Belle vue  Visiting  Committee  began  in  1872, 
some  months  before  the  Association  itself,  and  it  was  after- 
wards called  the  New  York  County  Committee;  it  has 
perhaps  done  more  work  and  accomplished  more  results 
than  all  the  other  county  committees  combined,  leaving 
out  those  for  Kings  and  Erie  counties  which  have  had, 
of  course,  kindred  problems  to  solve. 

At  the  time  that  the  Bellevue  Committee  first  entered 
on  its  work,  I  remember  well  the  scorn  with  which  two 
young  physicians,  both  internes  of  the  hospital,  spoke  to 
me  of  the  folly  of  those  ''silly  women, ^^  who  expected  to 
accomplish  any  reforms  in  Bellevue ;  one  of  them  adding : 
''To  begin  with,  no  decent  woman  ought  to  be  seen  inside 
the  gates.''  Pardon  me  if  I  pause  here  to  protest  against 
this  curious  but  common  masculine  argument  —  that  men 
and  indecent  women  may  freely  associate  anyivhere,  but 
no  "decent  woman"  is  to  enter  in,  even  to  save  and  re- 
form. 

But  to  return  to  Bellevue,  I  remember  also  hearing  Dr. 
James  Wood  (who,  for  thirty  years,  with  other  leading 
physicians,  had  held  official  positions  in  the  Hospital, 
while  not  one  of  them,  apparently,  had  ever  attempted 
any  reform)  describe  the  condition  of  things  in  the  past. 
He  said:  "We  could  not  prescribe  stimulants,  for  the 
pauper  nurses  drank  them  all,  —  indeed  they  used  to 
drink  the  alcohol  out  of  the  specimen  bottles  —  and  one 


THE  STATE  CHARITIES  AID   ASSOCIATION     85 

morning  during  a  typhus  epidemic,  when  I  went  early  to 
the  hospital,  I  found  in  one  ward  three  corpses  in  the  beds 
among  the  sick,  and  the  nurses  all  drunk  on  the  floor.'' 

These  were  the  kind  of  women,  too,  who  were  taking 
charge  of  the  hundreds  of  children,  sick  and  well,  living  on 
Randall's  Island  under  the  fostering  care  of  the  city  when 
the  Randall's  Island  Visiting  Committee  was  formed  in 
February,  1873,  and  the  "Children's  Law,"  of  1875, 
removing  children  from  poorhouses  and  forbidding  them 
being  received  in  them,  was  the  result  of  this  Committee's 
work  in  conjunction  with  the  State  Board  of  Charities. 

But  I  need  not  go  on ;  time  would  fail  me  to  tell  of  all 
the  work  done  by  the  New  York  and  Kings  County  Visit- 
ing Committees  and  the  Visiting  Committees  of  the 
County  Poorhouses. 

The  point  to  be  dwelt  on  is  that  there  still  remains  any 
quantity  of  work  to  do;  that  the  State  Charities  Aid 
Association  has  hundreds  of  trained  and  intelligent  volun- 
teers, ready  to  do  it ;  that  they  need,  however,  the  sup- 
port, moral  and  financial,  of  the  great  body  of  their  fellow- 
citizens,  whom  they  are  serving  and  whose  interests  they 
are  defending. 

As  Mrs.  Lowell  shows  in  this  paper,  conditions  in 
the  almshouses  and  other  charitable  and  reformatory 
institutions  of  New  York  State  a  generation  ago  were 
such  as  to  give  ample  employment  for  the  reforma- 
tory efforts,  not  only  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities, 
but  also  of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  and 
other  private  philanthropic  agencies,  all  earnestly  seek- 


86  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ing,  each  as  best  it  might,  to  raise  the  standard  of  care 
for  the  sick,  unfortunate,  and  delinquent  wherever  they 
were  found.  Early  in  the  field,  and  always  ably  led  by 
devoted  men  and  women,  the  work  of  the  State  Chari- 
ties Aid  Association  has  prospered,  and  it  has  rendered 
many  important  pubHc  services,  which  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
acknowledge  here. 


CHAPTER   VII 

The   State  Reformatory  for  Women  at  Hudson 

When  Mrs.  Lowell  took  her  seat  as  a  member  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities,  April  29,  1876,  John  V.  L.  Priiyn 
of  Albany  was  President  of  the  Board.  Early  and 
interesting  evidence  of  the  promptness  and  sympathetic 
intelligence  with  which  she  entered  upon  her  official 
work  is  shown  by  the  following  letter  addressed  only  a 
few  days  after  her  appointment,  and  before  she  had  yet 
attended  a  meeting,  to  Commissioner  Letch  worth,  of  the 
Eighth  District,  then  Vice  President  of  the  Board. 

West  New  Brighton,  May  16th,  76. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  am  glad  to  see  that  you  object  to  the  prisonlike  charac- 
ter of  some  of  our  reformatories.  I  was  shocked  at  the 
cells  and  general  jail  look  of  parts  of  the  House  of  Refuge. 
It  can  never  be  a  fit  place  for  young  children  and  ought 
to  be  converted  into  a  juvenile  prison,  which  it  really 
is  now. 

I  have  never  thanked  you  for  your  kind  note  of  welcome 
to  the  State  Board  of  Charities.  I  hope  I  shall  be  able 
to  be  useful. 

The  hope  that  her  services  might  be  useful  was  more 
fully  reahzed  by  her  work  in  and  out  of  the  State  Board 
than  any  mortal  knows,  and  indicated  the  dominant  pur- 
pose of  her  life. 

87 


88  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

She  immediately  began  a  series  of  thorough  inspections 
of  the  jails,  penitentiaries,  and  almshouses  to  which  at 
that  time  young  women  were  committed  as  criminals, 
vagrants,  or  paupers,  and  familiarized  herself  with  con- 
ditions in  those  institutions.  She  also  began  a  pains- 
taking inquiry  into  the  treatment  of  young  criminals  and 
vagrants  in  other  states  of  this  country,  in  England,  and 
in  the  countries  of  continental  Europe. 

Within  less  than  a  year  Mrs.  Lowell  was  prepared  to  lead 
in  a  crusade  for  reformed  methods  of  caring  for  young 
women  of  the  delinquent  and  vagrant  classes,  and  pre- 
sumably at  her  instance,  a  bill  was  introduced  in  the  Legis- 
lature of  1877,  ''To  provide  for  the  custody  and  reformatory 
treatment  of  vagrants."  This  bill  was  considered  by  the 
State  Board  at  a  meeting  held  June  14,  1877,  and  on 
motion  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  it  was 

^'Resolved,  That  the  act  to  provide  for  custody  and  re- 
formatory treatment  of  vagrants  be  referred  to  a  committee 
of  this  board  to  consider,  and  that  they  suggest  such  legis- 
lation on  that  subject  as  they  deem  expedient,  and  report 
at  the  next  meeting  of  the  board.'' 

Pursuant  to  this  resolution,  a  committee  of  three  was 
appointed  with  Mrs.  Lowell  as  chairman.  The  minutes 
of  the  Board  omit  the  names  of  her  associates.  This 
conmiittee  at  the  next  meeting  of  the  Board,  held  Septem- 
ber 7,  presented  two  reports,  Mrs.  Lowell  submitting  that 
of  the  majority;  the  Board,  having  considered  both  re- 
ports, added  Commissioners  Foster  and  Donnelly  to  the 
committee,  thus  increasing  its  membership  to  five,  and 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY '  FOR  WOMEN      S9 

instructed  the  committee  to  report  at  the  next  meeting 
of  the  Board. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Lowell  continued  her  work  in  the 
institutions  and  with  her  pen,  and  when  the  Board  met 
January  3,  1878,  presented  a  ^'Report  on  pauperism  in 
regard  to  vagrant,  feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates  of 
the  almshouses  of  the  State."  The  Board  received  the 
report  and  ordered  one  thousand  copies  printed.  The 
minutes  of  this  meeting  contain  no  reference  to  any 
report  by  the  committee  of  five.  At  the  meeting  of 
March  14,  1878,  the  Board  approved  the  report  on  va- 
grancy, above  mentioned,  and  adopted  the  following 
resolution : 

^'Whereas J  The  poorhouses  and  jails  of  the  several  coun- 
ties of  this  State  contain  a  large  number  of  vagrant,  dis- 
orderly and  idle  persons  for  whose  employment  no  ade- 
quate provision  is  made,  therefore, 

^'  Resolved,  That  the  Legislature  be  and  is  hereby  re- 
quested to  provide  for  the  establishment  of  workhouses  for 
the  detention  and  employment  of  these  classes,  and  for 
such  able-bodied  vagrants  known  as  tramps,  as  are  not 
provided  for  by  the  proposed  amendments  to  the  State 
Pauper  Law,  and  to  prohibit  the  commitment  of  able- 
bodied  persons  of  these  several  classes  to  poorhouses,  jails 
or  other  places  of  idle  detention." 

During  the  session  of  the  Legislature  of  1878,  a  bill  was 
introduced  in  the  Senate  which  provided  for  the  estabUsh- 
ment  of  workhouses  to  which  delinquent  women  might  be 
committed.  This  bill  was  noticed  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  who 
always  followed  closely  legislation  affecting  charities  or 
social  subjects,  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  State 


90  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Board  at  a  meeting  held  June   14,  1878,  and  on  her 
motion  the  following  resolution  was  adopted : 

''Resolved,  That  Senate  Bill  322,  year  1878,  be  referred 
to  a  committee  to  be  appointed  by  the  President,  with 
directions  to  report  at  the  next  stated  meeting. '^ 

Commissioners  Lowell,  Foster,  and  Ropes  were  there- 
upon designated  as  such  committee. 

When  the  State  Board  met  November  12,  1878,  Mrs. 
Lowell  presented  a  report  for  the  special  conamittee 
thus  appointed.  This  report  was  considered  of  such 
importance  that,  contrary  to  custom,  it  was  ordered 
printed  in  full  in  the  minutes  of  that  meeting. 

The  report,  which  bears  Mrs.  Lowell's  signature  alone, 
opens  with  a  statement  that  since  the  last  meeting  of  the 
Board  the  committee  had  conferred  with  the  Board  of 
Managers  of  the  Elmira  Reformatory,  and  after  consider- 
ing the  view  of  that  Board  are  of  opinion : 

''That  the  wisest  course  in  regard  to  the  great  reform 
contemplated  by  bill  322  is  to  press  upon  the  Legislature 
the  necessity  for  a  reformatory  for  women,  and  request  the 
passage  this  winter  of  a  bill  providing  for  the  purchase  of 
a  site  for  such  an  institution. 

"The  probability  that  the  plan  proposed  of  hiring 
buildings  and  using  them  as  workhouses  for  women, 
would  prove  a  failure,  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  finding 
suitable  buildings,  has  influenced  your  committee  and  in- 
duced them  to  advocate  placing  the  contemplated  re- 
formatory on  a  more  permanent  basis.  It  is  better  to 
wait  even  many  years,  if  that  prove  necessary,  in  order  to 
make  a  good  beginning,  rather  than  to  accept  some  half 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN      91 

measure  at  once,  and  bring  discredit  on  the  whole  plan 
by  failure.'' 

Thus  Mrs.  Lowell,  wise  and  watchful,  defeated,  single- 
handed,  an  impracticable  and  ill-considered  measure, — 
one  which,  viewed  from  the  present  standpoint  of  the 
ordinary  student  of  applied  philanthropy,  seems  ridiculous. 

Included  in  this  report  was  a  proposed  address  to  the 
Legislature  which^  Mrs.  Lowell  writing  for  the  committee, 
modestly  said,  '^your  committee  has  prepared,  and  asks 
that  it  may  be  printed  and  transmitted  to  the  Legislature." 
It  began  by  reminding  the  Legislature  that  by  concurrent 
resolution  of  May  27-29,  1873,  it  had  ''directed  the  State 
Board  of  Charities  to  examine  into  the  causes  of  the  in- 
crease of  crime,  pauperism  and  insanity  in  this  State." 
Mrs.  Lowell,  close  student  of  human  nature,  within  and 
without  legislative  halls,  well  knew  that  the  Legislature 
did  not  care  to  be  told  its  duty,  or  to  be  addressed 
on  such  uninteresting  subjects  as  reformatory  measures, 
but  that  it  did  like  to  have  its  directions  complied  with 
and  respected.  Having  thus  secured  the  attention  of 
the  Legislature,  the  report  referred  to  the  examination 
made,  pursuant  to  this  legislative  resolution,  by  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Board,  with  the  assistance  of  some  of  the  Com- 
missioners, into  the  antecedents  of  every  inmate  of  the 
almshouses  of  the  State,  and  reminded  the  Legislature, 
that  the  results  of  this  inquiry  were  submitted  to  the  Leg- 
islature in  the  tenth  annual  report  of  the  Board  (1877),  and 
that  ''even  a  casual  perusal  of  that  report  will  convince  the 
reader  that  one  of  the  most  important  and  most  dangerous 
causes  of  the  increase  of  crime,  pauperism  and  insanity  is 


92  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

unrestrained  liberty  allowed  to  vagrant  and  degraded 
women."  Continuing,  Mrs.  Lowell  gave  the  details  of 
many  almshouse  cases  taken  from  the  records,  all  showing 
"too  clearly  what  is  the  common  fate  of  vagrant  girls  when 
committed  to  our  poorhouses." 

The  proposed  address  to  the  Legislature  concludes  as 
follows : 

''There  are  two  distinct  and  separate  objects  to  be 
arrived  at  in  dealing  with  these  women :  to  reform  them  if 
that  be  possible,  but  if  that  cannot  be  done,  at  least  to  cut 
off  the  line  of  hereditary  pauperism,  crime  and  insanity 
now  transmitted  mainly  through  them.  Neither  of  these 
objects  can  possibly  be  attained  while  this  class  of  women 
is  left  under  the  control  of  count j^-  authorities,  whose 
action  is  necessarily,  from  the  constant  change  of  individual 
officers,  spasmodic  and  uncertain. 

''No  argument  can  be  advanced  against  the  policy  of 
withdrawing  this  class  of  offenders  from  the  care  of  local 
officials,  that  will  not  be  equally  strong  against  the  prac- 
tice of  maintaining  certain  classes  of  criminals  by  the 
State.  State  prisons  were  established,  no  doubt,  because 
it  was  found  that  no  local  machinery  was  fitted  to  cope 
with  the  more  dangerous  offenders  against  law  and  order. 
The  incompetency  of  local  machinery  to  deal  with  habitual 
offenders  of  what  is  supposed  to  be  a  less  dangerous  type, 
is  equally  proved  by  the  facts  quoted  above. 

"In  order  to  grapple  with  this  gigantic  evil  and  to 
stop  the  increase  of  pauperism,  crime  and  insanity  in 
this  community,  a  reformatory  for  women,  under  the 
management  of  women,  governed  on  the  same  principles 
as  those  which  control  the  managenent  of  the  State  Re- 
formatory at  Elmira  is  required. 

"  We  therefore,  strongly  urge  the  passage  of  a  bill  provid- 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN      93 

ing  for  the  selection  of  a  site,  and  the  adoption  of  plans 
for  such  an  institution/' 

Mrs.  Lowell  wrote,  and  she  alone  signed,  as  chairman,  the 
foregoing  report,  whereupon  "discussion  ensued ''  in  the 
State  Board  upon  the  report  with  its  proposed  address 
to  the  Legislature,  and  it  was  accepted,  ordered  printed 
in  the  minutes  and  considered  at  the  next  stated  meeting. 
The  minutes  of  the  State  Board  show  that  on  January  15, 
1879, 

"Commissioner  Ropes  called  up  the  special  order, 
being  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Senate  Bill  322 
(year  of  1878). 

"  Commissioner  Lowell  offered  the  following : 

"Resolved,  That  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  a  re- 
formatory for  women  be  accepted,  and  the  address  to  the 
Legislature  contained  therein  be  adopted  by  the  Board, 
printed  and  transmitted  to  the  Legislature  and  that 
the  substance  of  it  be  also  incorporated  in  the  annual 
report. 

"  Commissioner  Miller  moved  the  following  amendment : 

"  Strike  out  all  after  the  word  '  resolved '  and  insert  ^  That 
the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Reformatory  for  Women 
be  accepted  and  adopted,  the  Committee  discharged  and 
the  report  published  as  an  attached  paper  in  the  annual 
report.' 

"  Discussion  ensued. 

"  The  President  put  the  question  on  the  adoption  of 
Commissioner  Miller's  amendment  and  it  was  decided  in 
the  affirmative. 

"  The  President  put  the  question  on  the  adoption  of  the 
resolution  as  amended,  and  it  was  decided  in  the  affirma- 
tive." 


94  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  State  Board  was  evidently  not  inclined  to  follow 
Mrs.  Lowell's  lead  at  that  time,  in  her  crusade  for  a 
woman's  reformatory,  if  this  took  it  into  legislative  halls. 
The  discharge  of  the  Committee  relieved  it  from  further 
consideration  of  this  subject,  but  Mrs.  Lowell's  belief 
in  the  righteousness  of  her  cause  was  not  diminished,  and 
she  continued  her  propaganda.  At  a  Board  meeting  held 
September  10,  1879,  on  motion  of  Commissioner  Lowell, 
it  was 

^^  Resolved  J  That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  prepare 
a  paper  upon  the  subject  of  a  State  reformatory  for 
women  for  the  annual  report,  to  be  presented  at  the  next 
meeting," 

and  the  President  appointed  Commissioner  Lowell  as 
such  committee.  The  report  thus  called  for  was  presented 
and  read  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  at  a  Board  meeting  held  January 
13,  1880,  and  ordered  printed  in  the  annual  report  of  the 
Board,  as  an  appended  paper. 

How  hard  Mrs.  Lowell  must  have  worked,  for  the  thou- 
sands of  young  women  whose  cause,  all  unknown  to  them, 
she  was  championing  with  such  ardor  !  Within  six  months 
she  prepared  two  papers,  ^^One  Means  of  Preventing  Pau- 
perism and  Crime"  and  ^^Reformatories  for  Women,"  both 
directed  to  the  same  object,  —  the  removal  of  all  young 
women  from  the  almshouses  of  the  counties  and  their  fu- 
ture care  in  suitable  State  institutions.  They  are  so  char- 
acteristic of  the  writer  and  her  style,  and  were  so  helpful 
in  bringing  about  the  great  reform  she  advocated  in  chari- 
table administration,  and  the  establishment  of  the  State 
reformatories  at  Hudson,  Albion,  and  Bedford,  and  of  the 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN      95 

custodial  asylums   at   Newark  and   Rome,   that   liberal 
quotations  are  made  from  them. 

The  first  of  these  papers  to  be  published,  ''One 
Means  of  Preventing  Pauperism,''  was  written  for  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  at 
Chicago,  June  12,  1879,  and  before  the  Conference  as- 
sembled, Mrs.  Lowell  addressed  to  the  President  of  the 
Board,  who  attended  it,  the  following  letter : 

120  E.  30th  Street,  June  7th,  79. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  have  written  a  paper  for  the  Conference  which  I 
should  have  sent  to  you  had  I  been  quite  sure  of  your 
address.  Being  unwilhng  to  risk  its  non-arrival,  I  have 
mailed  it  to  Mr.  F.  H.  Wines,  Grand  Pacific  Hotel, 
Chicago,  and  hope  it  will  arrive  safely.  Will  you  be  so 
kind  as  to  inquire  of  him  if  he  has  it  and  see  that  the  right 
thing  is  done  with  it  ? 

It  is,  of  course,  on  the  subject  of  a  reformatory  for 
women,  and  if  it  is  printed  by  the  Conference  of  Charities, 
I  shall  want  a  thousand  copies  struck  off  for  use  in  our 
next  campaign  !  If  it  is  not  printed,  I  shall  have  it 
printed  myself,  I  think,  and  therefore  it  is  important 
for  me  to  know  what  disposition  is  made  of  it.  May  I 
ask  you  to  ''keep  an  eye"  on  it,  and  write  me  about  the 
paper  after  the  Conference  ? 

I  hope  that  the  meeting  will  be  a  success. 

This  interesting  paper  opens  thus : 

"The  Legislature  of  New  York,  by  concurrent  resolu- 
tion of  May  27-29,  1873,  directed  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  to  examine  into  the  causes  of  the  increase  of 
crime,  pauperism  and  insanity  in   that  State.     In  com- 


m  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

pliance  with  this  resolution,  an  examination  which  occu- 
pied the  Secretary  of  the  Board,  with  the  assistance  of 
various  commissioners,  for  the  greater  part  of  two  years, 
was  made  into  the  antecedents  of  every  inmate  of  the 
poorhouses  of  the  State,  and  the  result  submitted  to  the 
Legislature  in  the  tenth  annual  report  of  the  State  Board 
of  Charities/' 

[Then  follow  the  shocking  histories  of  a  few  only  of  the 
women  found  in  the  almshouses  of  New  York  State.] 

'^  Women  who  from  early  girlhood  have  been  tossed  from 
poorhouse  to  jail,  and  from  jail  to  poorhouse,  until  the 
last  trace  of  womanhood  in  them  has  been  destroyed/' 

''These  women  and  their  children,  and  hundreds  more 
like  them,  costing  the  hardworking  inhabitants  of  the 
State  annually  thousands  of  dollars  for  their  maintenance, 
corrupting  those  who  are  thrown  into  companionship 
with  them,  and  sowing  disease  and  death  among  the 
people,  are  the  direct  outcome  of  our  system.  The  com- 
munity itself  is  responsible  for  the  existence  of  such 
miserable,  wrecked  specimens  of  humanity.  These 
mothers  who  began  life  as  their  own  children  have  begun 
it,  inheriting  strong  passions  and  weak  wills,  born 
and  bred  in  a  poorhouse,  taught  to  be  wicked  before  they 
could  speak  plainly,  all  the  strong  evil  in  their  nature 
strengthened  by  their  surroundings  and  the  weak  good 
crushed  and  trampled  out  of  Kfe,  hunted  and  hounded, 
perhaps  committed  to  jail  while  their  tender  youth  had 
yet  some  germs  of  virtue  remaining,  dragged  through  the 
mire,  exposed  to  the  wickedness  of  wicked  men  and  women 
whose  pleasure  it  is  to  sully  and  drag  down  whatever  is 
more  innocent  than  themselves,  in  the  power  of  brutal 
officials,  —  what  hope  could  there  be  for  them  ?  And 
how  shall  we  cast  a  stone  at  them,  whom  we  ourselves 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN      97 

have,  by  the  strong  arm  of  the  law,  thrust  into  the  direst 
temptation  ?  To  begin  at  the  beginning,  what  right  had 
we  to  permit  them  to  be  born  of  parents  who  were  de- 
praved in  body  and  mind?  What  right  have  we  today 
to  allow  men  and  women  who  are  diseased  and  vicious  to 
reproduce  their  kind,  and  bring  into  the  world  beings 
whose  existence  must  be  one  long  misery  to  themselves 
and  others?  We  do  not  hesitate  to  cut  off,  where  it  is 
possible,  the  entail  of  insanity  by  incarcerating  for  life  the 
incurably  insane ;  why  should  we  not  also  prevent  the 
transmission  of  moral  insanity,  as  fatal  as  that  of  the  mind  ? 

''These  men  and  women  are  now  constantly  maintained 
by  the  public,  sometimes  for  years  at  a  time  in  the  same 
institution,  sometimes  continually  changing  from  one  to 
another,  but  never  failing  to  demand  support  from  their 
fellows.  Why,  then,  should  they  not  be  maintained  in 
institutions  fitted  to  save  them  from  their  own  weaknesses 
and  vices,  where  in  due  time  they  may  be  formed  anew 
in  body  and  mind,  and  be  ready  to  enter  the  ranks  of  the 
free  and  intelligent  men  and  women  ?  Why  should  they 
not  spend  years,  if  necessary,  in  institutions  described 
by  Governor  Haines  of  New  Jersey  in  the  following  words : 
'Preventive  and  reformatory  institutions  are  not  to  be 
regarded  as  places  of  punishment,  but  as  schools  of  cor- 
rectional education.  ...  In  them  the  ignorant  are 
taught,  the  vicious  restrained,  the  desponding  cheered 
and  the  hopeless  encouraged.  In  them  industry  becomes 
habitual,  and  good  citizens  are  made  of  those  who  would 
otherwise  become  pests  of  society,  following  their  own 
evil  propensities,  or  becoming  the  victims  of  more  practised 
and  designing  offenders.' 

"In  the  present  paper,  I  speak  chiefly  of  women,  be- 
cause they  form  the  visible  links  in  the  direful  chain  of 
hereditary  pauperism  and  disease,  but  it  must  not  be  for- 


98  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

gotten  that  the  treatment  here  prescribed  for  them  should 
also  be  applied  to  the  reformation  of  the  men  whose  evil 
propensities  may  be  likewise  handed  down  from  one  gen- 
eration to  another/' 

[Continuing,  Mrs.  Lowell  gives  statistical  information, 
evidently  gathered  with  much  care,  showing  that  in  the 
year  1878,  in  the  State  of  New  York,  outside  of  the  coun- 
ties of  New  York  and  Kings,  there  were  sentenced  to  the 
county  jails,  or  to  penitentiaries,  or  admitted  to  alms- 
houses, ^^662  women  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and 
thirty,  guilty  of  what  are  called  ^ minor  offences,'  and 
dependent  for  longer  or  shorter  periods  on  the  public  for 
maintenance,  254  of  whom  are  prostitutes  and  276  drunk- 
ards. More  than  a  third  of  these  women  are  under 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  so  that  probably  for  them,  at 
least,  many  years  of  a  shameful  life  are  in  store,  during 
which  time  the  public  will  maintain  them."  The  names 
and  histories  of  the  662  young  women  were  obtained  from 
the  official  records.] 

''The  presence  of  these  women  in  the  poorhouses,  peni- 
tentiaries and  jails,  under  the  circumstances,  renders  it 
certain  that  they  have  less  than  the  average  self-control. 
They  have  entered  on  the  downward  course.  In  neither 
jail,  poorhouse  nor  penitentiary,  will  they  find  anything 
to  help  them  turn  back ;  on  the  contrary,  all  the  surround- 
ings will  force  them  lower,  and  this  would  be  the  case, 
were  they  much  more  able  to  resist  than  they  are.  In  the 
jail  and  penitentiary  every  door  to  virtue  is  closed,  and 
every  avenue  to  vice  and  crime  is  open.  In  the  poorhouse 
they  find  others  like  themselves,  and  although  the  de- 
grading influences  may  not  be  so  strong  as  in  jails  and 
penitentiaries,  they  are  there,  and  strong  enough  to  pre- 
vent any  chance  of  rescue.    Having  an  inherited  and 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  S'M  WOM^N ' 'W 

deep-seated  repugnance  to  labor,  these  women,  both  in 
the  poorhouse  and  jail,  are  supported  in  absolute  idleness, 
without  even  the  bodily  exercise  which  is  necessary  for 
health.  They  are  shutmp  in  poisonous  air,  suffering  a 
physical  degeneration  only  to  be  compared  with  the 
ruin  wrought  at  the  same  time  in  their  minds  and  souls. 
^'To  rescue  these  unfortunate  beings  and  to  save  the 
industrious  part  of  the  conununity  from  the  burden  of 
their  support,  reformatories  should  be  established  to 
which  all  women  under  thirty,  when  arrested  for  mis- 
demeanors, or  upon  the  birth  of  a  second  illegitimate 
child,  should  be  committed  for  very  long  periods,  not 
as  a  punishment,  but  for  the  same  reason  that  the  insane 
are  sent  to  an  asylum,  and  where  they  should  be  subject 
to  such  physical,  moral  and  intellectual  training  as  would 
re-create  them.  Such  training  would  be  no  child's  play, 
since  the  very  character  of  the  women  must  be  changed, 
and  every  good  and  healthy  influence  would  be  rendered 
useless  without  the  one  element  of  time.  It  is  education 
in  every  sense  which  they  need,  and  education  is  a  long 
process,  tedious  and  wearing,  requiring  unfaltering  hope 
and  unfaiUng  patience  on  the  part  of  teacher  and  pupil. 
Consequently  these  reformatories  must  not  be  prisons 
which  would  crush  out  the  life  from  those  unfortunate 
enough  to  be  cast  into  them ;  they  must  be  homes,  — 
homes  where  a  tender  care  shall  surround  the  weak  and 
fallen  creatures  who  are  placed  under  their  shelter,  where 
a  homelike  feeling  may  be  engendered,  and  where,  if 
necessary,  they  may  spend  years.  The  unhappy  beings 
we  are  speaking  of  need,  first  of  all,  to  be  taught  to  be 
women ;  they  must  be  induced  to  love  that  which  is  good 
and  pure,  and  to  wish  to  resemble  it ;  they  must  learn  all 
household  duties ;  they  must  learn  to  enjoy  work ;  they 
must  have  a  future  to  look  forward  to;   and  they  must 


100  ^     '  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

be  cured,  both  body  and  soul,  before  they  can  be  safely 
trusted  to  face  the  world  again. 

'^The  following  description  will  give  some  idea  of  an  in- 
stitution where  the  necessary  circumstances  might  be 
obtained : 

"1st.  —  A  comparatively  large  tract  of  land  (from  two 
hundred  and  fifty  to  five  hundred  acres),  to  allow  of  free 
out  of  door  life  without  any  communication  with  the  outer 
world. 

"  2d.  —  A  series  of  buildings,  each  to  accommodate  from 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  women,  and  so  arranged  as  to  afford 
ample  means  of  classification. 

'^3d.  —  These  buildings  to  be  under  the  charge  of 
women  officers. 

"4th.  —  The  inmates  to  be  trained  in  as  many  kinds  of 
labor  as  possible,  all  household  work,  sewing,  knitting, 
cooking,  washing  and  ironing,  inside  the  house ;  and  out- 
side to  work  in  gardens  and  greenhouses,  to  take  care  of 
cows,  to  be  dairy  maids,  etc. ;  the  object  being  their  im- 
provement in  every  respect,  and  also  their  being  finally 
fitted  to  support  themselves  by  honest  industry. 

"  5th.  —  Besides  this  education  in  labor,  their  mental 
and  moral  faculties  should  be  enlarged  by  constant  teach- 
ing, a  school  being  one  of  the  main  features  of  the  re- 
formatory. 

"6th.  —  The  endeavor  should  also  be  made  to  restore 
the  physical  health  of  the  women,  and  they  should  be 
kept  under  the  care  of  a  physician  of  their  own  sex. 

"7th.  —  The  diversity  of  buildings  would  afford  means 
of  grading  the  inmates,  and  a  transfer  from  one  to  another 
would  mark  a  step  in  advance,  or  a  temporary  fall  to 
a  lower  grade.  By  this  means,  the  constant  '  looking 
forward^  necessary  to  a  hopeful  life  would  be  obtained. 

"8th.  —  The  board  of  managers,  which  should  be  com- 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMiiij  i  # 

posed  of  both  men  and  women,  should  have  power  to 
place  out  the  women  committed  to  then*  charge,  in  situa- 
tions where  their  wages  should  belong  to  themselves,  but 
where  they  would  still  be  under  guardianship  and  liable 
to  recommitment  to  the  reformatory  in  case  of  ill  conduct. 

^^  Under  such  a  system  many  of  the  women,  who  with 
our  present  jail  and  poorhouse  education  are  doomed, 
might  without  doubt  be  rescued.  They  need  to  be  saved 
from  temptation,  which  assails  them  from  within  and 
without,  and  to  be  guided  aright,  and  many  of  them  will 
respond  joyfully  to  the  efforts  for  their  improvement. 

"If,  however,  there  were  no  hope  of  reforming  even  one 
of  the  thousand  of  young  women  now  beginning  what  may 
be  a  long  life  of  degradation  and  woe,  if  the  State  owed 
no  debt  to  those  whom  it  has  systematically  crushed  and 
imbruted  from  their  earliest  years,  even  then  it  would 
be  the  wisest  economy  to  build  houses  for  them,  where  they 
might  be  shut  up  from  the  present  day  till  the  day  of  their 
death.  They  will  all  live  on  the  public  in  one  way  or 
another  for  the  rest  of  their  lives,  many  of  them  will  con- 
tinue to  have  children,  and  to  cut  off  this  baneful  entail 
of  degenerate  propensities  would  be  economy,  even  though 
the  term  of  guardianship  ended  only  with  the  unhappy 
life  itself.  For  self-protection,  the  State  should  care  for 
these  human  beings  who,  having  been  born,  must  be  sup- 
ported to  the  end ;  but  every  motive  of  humanity,  justice 
and  self-interest  should  lead  to  the  extinction  of  the  line 
as  soon  as  possible. '' 

Mrs.  Lowell  lived  to  see  three  State  reformatories  for 
young  women  established  on  the  lines  she  projected  in 
1879,  in  this  report,  —  Hudson,  Albion,  and  Bedford.  In 
all  of  them,  seven  of  the  eight  conditions  which  she  con- 
sidered essential  to  their  successful  operation  have  at  least 


a^.:>;{;-f;jOSSipHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

in  part  been  met ;  the  State  has  not,  however,  provided 
any  of  these  three  institutions  with  a  site  of  adequate  size. 
The  second  paper  above  referred  to  is  Mrs.  Lowell's 
report  on  ^^Reformatories  for  Women, '^  which  was  pre- 
sented to  the  State  Board  of  Charities  at  a  meeting  held 
January  3,  1880.  This  shows  careful  study  and  a  mastery 
of  the  subject  which  merit  even  fuller  quotation  than 
space  allows.     She  begins  in  her  usual  direct  manner : 

''In  compliance  with  your  resolution,  I  respectfully 
submit  this  paper  on  'Reformatories  for  Women.'  Such 
reformatories  are  needed  for  women  who  are  now  almost 
constantly  inmates  of  public  institutions,  whether  jails, 
penitentiaries  or  poorhouses,  and  who  perpetuate  the 
classes  of  criminals  and  paupers,  themselves  belonging 
alternately  to  both.  LTnder  the  present  plan  of  providing 
for  them,  they  are  constantly  sinking  deeper  and  deeper 
into  the  abyss  of  vice  and  crime,  they  are  a  serious  burden 
upon  the  hard-working  part  of  the  community,  and  are, 
moreover,  continually  adding  to  that  burden  by  pro- 
ducing children  who  are  almost  sure  to  inherit  their  evil 
tendencies.  These  women  are  the  same  individuals 
whether  they  be  committed  to  jails  and  penitentiaries  as 
criminals  or  to  poorhouses  as  vagrants  and  paupers.  It 
is  as  the  inmates  of  poorhouses  only  that  the  State  Board 
of  Charities,  as  such,  encounters  them  and  becomes  aware 
of  their  dangerous  and  corrupting  influence,  but  as  all 
attempts  by  government  authority  in  other  countries  and 
states  to  reform  this  class  of  women  have  dealt  with  them 
in  their  alternate  character  of  criminals,  it  is  from  the 
history  of  such  attempts  and  from  the  records  of  experience 
gained  thereby  in  prisons  and  concerning  prison  discipline 
that  I  must  draw  my  principal  facts  and  arguments  in 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN    103 

favor  of  a  change  of  system  in  our  own  State.  My  object 
is  to  show  that  the  project  of  reformatories  for  women 
supported  by  public  funds  is  neither  a  new  or  untried  one." 

Then  she  refers  to  the  work  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Fry  in 
1817,  for  the  reformation  of  women  prisoners  in  Newgate 
Prison,  London,  and  of  a  conmaittee  of  ladies  she  formed, 
which,  after  twenty  years'  work,  improved  the  whole 
prison  system  of  England.  English  jails  in  1821  were 
then  described  in  almost  the  same  words  as  those  Mrs. 
Lowell  used  in  1880  to  describe  the  jails  of  the  State 
of  New  York.  Excerpts  to  emphasize  her  points  are 
freely  made  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  from  Mrs.  Fry's  reports, 
and  from  the  Enghsh  Jail  Act  of  1823.  She  notes  that 
by  1841  the  reforms  were  generally  approved,  and  had 
also  been  adopted  by  the  French  government.  Continu- 
ing, she  says  in  her  report : 

''It  appears  by  the  above  extracts  that  more  than  fifty 
years  ago  the  English  jails  were  redeemed  from  the  disgrace 
of  imprisoning  men  and  women  together  under  the  charge 
of  male  officers,  and  I  doubt  if  such  a  legalized  inde- 
cency^ could  be  found  today  in  any  civilized  conmiunity  of 
Europe.  The  United  States  is  half  a  century  behind  in 
the  care  of  her  jail  inmates,  and  in  the  State  of  New  York 
at  any  rate,  men  and  women,  the  innocent  and  the  guilty, 
are  still  imprisoned  together  in  degradation  and  idleness. 

"Fortunately  for  the  good  name  of  the  United  States, 
however,  two  of  the  states  have,  within  the  past  few  years, 
adopted  Elizabeth  Fry's  recommendation  and  have  each 
'one  prison  appropriated  solely  to  female  prisoners.' 
In  1873  a  'Reformatory  Institution  for  Women'  was 
opened  by  the  State  of  Indiana.  It  is  governed  by  a  board 
of  three  women,  and  all  the  officers,  except  the  physician 


104  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  the  steward,  are  women.  The  superintendent,  in  the 
report  for  1878,  writes  as  follows : 

^^ '  The  success  in  the  prison  is  without  a  parallel  in  prison 
history;  a  well-organized  family  performing  their  daily 
duties  willingly  and  cheerfully ;  the  most  hardened  soon 
submitting  to  the  influence  of  Christian  kindness  and 
forbearance,  and  at  the  expiration  of  their  terms  are  pre- 
pared to  reenter  society  as  good  servants,  or  the  lost  places 
in  the  family  circle.  Eighty-two  per  cent  of  those  dis- 
charged have  been  reformed  and  are  now  useful  members 
of  society ;  no  runaways  and  only  one  recommittal  in  five 
years.' 

''In  November,  1877,  the  'Reformatory  Prison  for 
Women'  was  opened  in  Massachusetts.  The  Board  of 
Prison  Commissioners  and  the  Advisory  Board,  consist- 
ing, respectively,  of  three  men  and  three  women,  in  a  joint 
report  made  to  the  governor  of  the  State  in  October,  1878, 
speak  as  follows : 

"  '  The  first  year  of  the  existence  of  the  Reformatory 
Prison  for  Women  has  come  to  an  end  and  has  been 
marked  by  none  of  the  catastrophies  foretold  by  those  who 
were  faithless  as  to  the  success  of  such  an  institution. 
Women  have  proved  themselves  entirely  adequate  to  the 
control  and  management  of  women.  No  disturbance 
worthy  of  notice  has  taken  place,  and  no  prisoner  has 
escaped.  Turbulent  and  insolent  prisoners  have  been 
subdued  and  reduced  to  obedience  as  successfully  as  if  they 
had  been  under  the  control  of  men,  and  we  believe  with 
better  results  to  the  character  of  those  under  discipline. 
A  large  majority  of  the  prisoners  have  been  habitually 
orderly  and  industrious,  and  easily  controlled.' " 

The  report  concludes  with  the  statistical  information 
relating  to  women  inmates  of  jails,  penitentiaries,  and 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN    105 

almshouses  in  1878,  which  was  included  in  the  paper  read 
to  the  Chicago  Conference,  and  the  following  paragraph : 

''Such  being  the  experience  of  England,  Indiana,  Massa- 
chusetts and  Ontario  in  regard  to  female  prisoners,  the 
citizens  of  the  great  State  of  New  York  may  well  demand 
of  their  legislature  that  some  steps  be  taken  to  place  her 
in  the  rank  of  states  which  deal  wisely  and  humanely  with 
their  dangerous  classes.  Having  set  an  example  to  the 
whole  world  in  the  Elmira  Reformatory  for  men,  it  would 
be  a  like  act  of  wisdom  to  establish  an  institution  of  a  cor- 
responding character  for  women." 

Mrs.  Lowell  continued,  both  in  the  State  Board  and 
out  of  it,  her  campaign  for  women's  reformatories ;  a  few 
of  her  letters  written  on  this  subject  have  been  preserved, 
—  all  are  worth  printing,  but  space  will  not  allow ;  her 
efforts  at  length  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  following  pre- 
amble and  resolution,  which  she  presented  at  a  meeting 
of  the  Board,  March  8,  1881 : 

'^Whereas,  In  the  inquiry  made  by  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  into  the  causes  of  the  increase  of  pauperism,  it 
was  conclusively  proved  that  vice,  pauperism,  idiocy  and 
insanity  are  to  a  great  degree  hereditary;   and 

'' Whereas,  The  present  organization  of  the  poorhouses 
of  the  State  renders  it  impossible  that  the  vicious  and 
pauper  women,  who  become  the  mothers  of  vicious  and 
pauper  children,  should  be  trained  and  disciplined  in  those 
institutions ;   and 

'^  Whereas  J  Under  a  systematic  course  of  instruction 
a  certain  number  of  such  women  might  be  reclaimed  and 
the  State  saved  from  great  future  expense;   therefore, 

'^  Resolved,  That  the  State  Board  of  Charities  recommend 
that  the  Legislature  establish  an  institution  for  the  custody 


106  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  discipline  of  vagrants  and  disorderly  women,  under 
the  charge  of  officers  of  their  own  sex/^ 

The  State  Board  of  Charities  henceforward  stood  be- 
hind Mrs.  Lowell  in  her  great  enterprise.  A  preliminary 
skirmish  only  in  her  campaign  for  a  woman's  reformatory 
had  now  been  gained ;  the  final  victory  must  yet  be  won 
in  the  Legislature,  and  she  now  endeavored  to  convince 
it  of  the  righteousness  of  her  cause. 

Shortly  after  the  State  Board  adopted  Mrs.  Lowell's 
resolution,  she  published  another  pamphlet,  ^'Some  Facts 
concerning  the  Jails,  Penitentiaries  and  Poorhouses  of  the 
State  of  New  York,"  in  which  she  pointed  out,  in  proof  of 
her  statements,  the  shocking  conditions  then  prevailing  in 
these  institutions,  and  quoted  more  recent  statistics  from 
the  latest  report  of  the  New  York  Prison  Association, 
and  a  plea  by  Bishop  Huntington  in  behalf  of  the  female 
prisoners  in  the  Onondaga  County  penitentiary. 

Distribution  of  this  pamphlet  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  was 
made  to  the  members  of  the  Legislature  of  1881  upon  the 
introduction  of  a  bill  for  the  establishment  of  a  reforma- 
tory for  women.  It  was  also  widely  circulated  through- 
out the  State,  where  it  helped  increase  the  number  of 
those  who  were  interested  in  social  questions,  and  enlisted 
a  large  and  active  following  in  support  of  the  bill. 

Mrs.  Lowell  had  made  many  friends  among  the  leading 
men  in  the  Senate  and  Assembly  during  her  success- 
ful work  of  1878  for  the  Asylum  for  Feeble-minded 
Women,  and  to  these  she  now  again  appealed,  encouraged 
by  one  great  victory  for  humanity,  and  supported  by 
public  sentiment  and  the  press.     Success  in  the  Legis- 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN    107 

lature  was  not  long  delayed,  for  on  May  2,  1881,  the  bill 
she  had  framed  was  enacted  as  '^  An  Act  to  provide  for  the 
establishment  of  a  House  of  Refuge  for  Women."  The  act 
provided  for  the  establishment  of  the  new  institution  at 
some  point  outside  the  counties  of  New  York  and  Kings, 
and  for  the  appointment  by  the  Governor,  with  the  con- 
sent of  the  Senate,  of  five  managers  to  serve  without 
compensation.  Section  5  of  the  act  directed  the  man- 
agers to  organize  within  six  months  from  their  appoint- 
ment, and  to  purchase  land  and  one  or  more  buildings 
suitable  for  the  detention  and  employment  of  such  women 
as  might  be  committed  to  their  charge. 

^'In  case  no  land  and  buildings  thereon,  suitable  for  the 
purpose,  can  be  purchased,  the  said  managers  are  hereby 
authorized  to  select  and  purchase  an  eUgible  site,  within 
the  limits  of  the  State  as  aforesaid,  and  to  cause  to  be 
erected  thereon  appropriate  buildings  with  accommoda- 
tions for  two  hundred  and  fifty  inmates,  together  with  such 
household  accommodations  for  the  superintendent  and 
family,  and  for  subordinate  officers,  as  said  managers  may 
deem  necessary." 

This  act,  a  model  of  its  kind,  made  careful  provision 
for  the  protection  of  the  State  from  financial  loss  in  the 
construction  of  the  buildings,  appropriated  $100,000, 
for  the  land  and  buildings,  and  directed  the  Board  to 
appoint  a  woman  superintendent. 

Section  8  provided  that  when  the  House  of  Refuge  shall 
be  ready  for  the  reception  of  inmates,  all  justices  of  the 
peace,  police  justices,  and  other  magistrates  may  sentence 
and  commit  "all  females  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and 


108  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

thirty  years,  who  have  been  convicted  of  petit  larceny^ 
habitual  drunkenness,  of  being  common  prostitutes,  fre~ 
quenters  of  disorderly  houses  or  houses  of  prostitution, 
to  the  said  House  of  Refuge  for  a  term  of  not  more  than 
five  years,  unless  sooner  discharged  therefrom  by  the 
board   of  managers." 

Other  sections  of  the  bill  made  it  the  duty  of  the  mana- 
gers to  provide  for  the  employment  of  the  inmates,  for 
the  formation  in  them  ^'of  habits  of  self-supporting  in- 
dustry," and  for  ''their  mental  and  moral  improvement 
and  good  order,"  and  authorized  a  system  of  credit  by 
which  a  possible  balance  for  work  performed  above  the 
cost  of  maintenance  might  be  paid  the  inmates  on  dis- 
charge. By  all  of  these  provisions  the  legislative  sanction 
to  Mrs.  Lowell's  views  on  the  best  methods  of  reformatory 
treatment  for  young  women  was  given,  and  there  is  strong 
reason  for  the  belief  that  the  bill  became  law  substantially 
as  drawn  by  her,  embodying  in  concrete  form  her  con- 
victions, slowly  matured  during  years  of  almshouse  in- 
spection, as  to  what  the  State  ought  to  do  for  its  own 
protection,  and  for  the  reformation  of  the  classes  of  young 
women  to  whom  the  doors  of  the  new  institution  were 
soon  to  swing  open. 

Governor  Cornell  appointed  a  board  of  five  managers, 
of  whom  two  were  women,  in  May,  1881,  who  subsequently 
reported  to  the  Legislature  that  after  diligent  inquiries 
and  examinations,  they  were  unable  to  purchase  land 
with  buildings  thereon,  suitable  for  the  purposes  of  the 
institution  ;  but  during  the  year  a  plot  of  thirty  acres  on 
the  northerly  side  of  the  city  of  Hudson  was  purchased 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN    109 

for  $3000  and  premiums  were  offered  for  suitable  plans 
for  buildings.  Delay  ensued,  and  in  the  meantime,  to- 
ward the  close  of  1882,  a  much  more  eligible  and  desirable 
site  of  about  forty  acres,  lying  on  the  southerly  side  of 
the  city  of  Hudson,  was  offered  for  the  institution,  which 
the  managers  thought  it  best  for  the  State  to  purchase. 
The  appropriation  being  about  to  lapse,  a  bill  was  intro- 
duced in  the  Assembly  of  1883,  reappropriating  $95,000 
and  making  an  additional  appropriation  of  $25,000,  but 
this  failing  to  pass  the  Senate,  all  proceedings  under  the 
law  of  1881  were  necessarily  ended. 

How  extremely  disappointing  this  delay,  suspense,  and 
legislative  indifference  must  have  been  to  Mrs.  Lowell ! 
It  must  at  times  almost  have  seemed  to  her  that  she 
would  not  live  long  enough  to  witness  the  fruition  of  her 
work  for  the  young  inmates  of  the  almshouses  and  jails, 
whose  need  for  more  hopeful  care  she  had  for  so  many 
years  been  pleading.  But  she  did  not  lose  heart,  and 
her  letters  of  that  period  show  her  still  at  work  for  the 
reformatory. 

The  House  of  Refuge  bill  was  again  introduced  in  the 
Legislature  of  1884,  early  in  the  session,  and  shortly  after- 
wards Mrs.  Lowell  wrote  as  follows  to  Mr.  Fanning :  ^ 

February  22,  1884. 
My  dear  Mr.  Fanning: 

I  have  yours  containing  Judge  Cadman's  letter  and  the 
copy  of  the  bill  relating  to  House  of  Refuge  for  Women. 
I  should  wish  to  make  an  amendment,  substituting  the 

*  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities. 


no  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

approval  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  for  that  of  the 
Comptroller.     Could  not  this  be  done? 

In  thinking  more  of  Judge  Cadman^s  letter  and  the  bill, 
I  have  become  quite  enthusiastic  for  our  poor  House  of 
Refuge,  and  want  to  start  out  on  a  new  crusade  for  it !  I 
shall  write  a  note  to  each  member  of  the  Legislature  and 
send  to  you  to  be  delivered  at  the  Capitol,  together 
with  copies  of  the  enclosed  papers  and  my  paper  on  Re- 
formatories for  Women,  if  you  consider  the  addition  of  that 
a  wise  thing. 

Please  let  me  know,  and  have  large  envelopes  addressed 
to  each  of  the  members  of  Assembly  and  Senate  to  be  kept 
until  I  send  you  my  notes  and  papers  like  enclosed. 

Have  you  plenty  of  ^Reformatories  for  Women'? 
I  have,  and  will  send  them  if  needed.  Meanwhile,  please 
send  me  at  once,  list  of  Senators  and  150  large  half  sheets. 

This  bombardment  of  the  Legislature  was  effective, 
and  by  the  passage  on  May  21,  1884,  of  Chapter  314  of 
the  laws  of  that  year,  the  board  of  managers  was  given 
the  means  to  purchase  the  site  on  the  southerly  side  of 
the  city  of  Hudson,  where  the  institution  now  stands,  and 
to  erect  the  necessary  buildings. 

Although  the  original  appropriation  for  the  House  of 
Refuge  had  lapsed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  life  of  the  board 
of  managers  was  continuous,  and  it  held  meetings  from 
time  to  time.  The  great  importance  of  a  strong  and  up- 
right board,  under  whose  immediate  supervision  the  build- 
ings of  the  institution  should  be  erected,  rules  for  discipline 
and  administration  adopted,  and  the  staff  of  officers 
appointed,  was  fully  realized  by  Mrs.  Lowell  who  kept 
herself  well  informed  on  all  that  concerned  the  reformatory. 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN    111 

Two  years  elapsed  after  the  passage  of  the  second  act 
establishing  the  House  of  Refuge,  before  the  buildings  were 
completed  by  the  contractor  and  turned  over  to  the  State 
in  May,  1886.  Another  year  was  taken  by  the  managers 
in  furnishing  the  buildings  and  appointing  the  officers 
and  employees,  and  the  institution  was  finally  opened  April 
15,  1887,  the  first  inmate  being  received  May  7. 

A  few  months  before  Mrs.  Lowell  had  written  the  follow- 
ing letter  to  her  sister-in-law : 

West  New  Brighton, 
Dear  Annie  :  December  19th,  '86. 

You  will  be  interested  to  know  that  another  step  has 
been  taken  towards  the  opening  of  the  'Women's  House 
of  Refuge'  at  Hudson  (my  reformatory  that  I  worked  so 
hard  for  for  so  many  years).  I  stopped  there  on  my  way 
to  Albany  week  before  last  and  found  the  furniture  almost 
all  in,  the  fence  put  up,  and  the  Superintendent  and  two 
of  her  assistants  already  at  work,  preparing  to  open  within 
a  month  or  two.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  buildings 
are  excellent  —  cheap,  simple,  suitable,  pretty,  all  but 
the  prison. 

The  Superintendent  has  just  the  right  ideas,  it  seems  to 
me,  and  is  a  woman  of  character  and  experience.  For- 
tunately, we  put  into  the  law  that  she  should  appoint  her 
own  subordinates,  so  she  is  choosing  them  slowly  and 
wisely.  Altogether  I  feel  much  encouraged,  and  am  glad 
things  are  going  slowly,  for  there  will  be  all  the  more 
chance  of  their  going  right.  I  have  had  many  disappoint- 
ments about  this  thing,  but  they  all  turned  out  right  in  the 
end,  and  there  is  nothing  to  regret  now,  unless  Governor 
Hill  puts  in  some  new  managers  to  upset  things,  —  and 
he  has  two  more  years  to  stay  in  office.  .  .  . 


112  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  work  of  the  House  of  Refuge  at  Hudson,  now 
known  as  the  New  York  State  Training  School  for  Girls, 
has  continued  for  nearly  twenty  years,  and  during  all  this 
time,  until  her  death,  Mrs.  Lowell  retained  her  earnest 
and  intelligent  interest  not  only  in  the  institution  and  its 
inmates,  but  in  all  legislation  which  might  affect  it  and 
them.  The  institution,  which  had  an  original  capacity  of 
two  hundred  and  fifty,  was  soon  filled ;  from  time  to  time 
its  enlargement  has  been  considered.  Amendatory  acts 
affecting  the  inmates  and  the  government  of  the  re- 
formatory have  been  introduced  in  the  Legislature.  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  always  on  the  watch  to  further  good  and  to 
prevent  ill-advised  legislation,  as  this  letter  to  Mr.  Fan- 
ning shows : 

120  East  30th  Street, 
Feby.  17th,  1892. 
Dear  Sir: 

I  have  just  received  a  copy  of  Senate  Bill  367,  intro- 
duced by  Mr.  Osborne  to  amend  the  laws  establishing  the 
House  of  Refuge  for  Women,  and  although,  probably,  the 
bill  was  framed  by  the  Managers,  it  seems  to  me  that 
there  are  some  provisions  which  ought  not  to  become  law. 

As  the  amendments  are  not  printed  in  italics,  and  as  I 
have  only  had  the  bill  for  an  hoiu-,  I  shall  probably  omit 
several  things  that  ought  to  be  noticed,  and  I  write  at 
once  in  order  to  call  your  attention  to  those  which  have 
struck  me  in  a  hasty  reading. 

Page  2,  section  8  of  the  present  law  is  amended  so  that 
"  any  female  between  the  ages  of  twelve  and  twenty-five 
years  '^  may  be  committed.  This  seems  to  me  a  very  great 
mistake;  the  present  limits  of  age  are  fifteen  and  forty 
years  and  were  intended  to  include  women  likely  to  have 


THE  STATE  REFORMATORY  FOR  WOMEN     113 

children.  By  excluding  women  over  twenty-five,  large 
numbers  of  this  dangerous  class  could  not  be  restrained  in 
the  House  of  Refuge,  while  on  the  other  hand  to  include 
girls  between  twelve  and  fifteen  is  quite  unnecessary, 
because  the  House  of  Refuge  at  RandalFs  Island  receives 
girls  up  (and  this  is  my  impression  but  I  have  no  copy 
of  the  law)  to  sixteen  years  and  that  institution  answers 
every  purpose  for  the  training  of  these  girls  without  the 
disadvantage  of  their  being  associated  with  women  much 
older  than  themselves  and  of  course  much  more  deeply 
experienced  in  vice.  I  protest  strongly  against  this  change 
which  has,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  not  one  argument  in  its 
favor. 

On  page  6  it  is  provided  that  the  Board  of  Managers 
of  the  House  of  Refuge  for  Women  shall  have  power  to 
place  the  children  of  inmates  in  "  any  asylum  for  children 
in  this  State''  and  to  pay  for  them  at  a  rate  not  to  exceed 
$2.50  a  week.  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  it  is  necessary 
that  the  children  should  be  by  law  a  charge  upon  the 
counties  from  which  the  women  come,  and  that  the 
county  would  be  responsible  for  their  board  in  any  insti- 
tution within  its  limits  to  which  the  Board  of  Managers 
should  conmiit  them.  In  any  event  the  payment  of  $2.50 
a  week  is  too  much  since  some  of  the  counties  pay  only  $1 
a  week  for  children  in  institutions  and  none  that  I  know 
of  pays  as  much  as  $2.50  a  week.  It  would  seem  as  if  this 
provision,  giving  the  authority  to  pay  this  excessive  rate 
of  board,  to  "any  asylum  in  the  State''  were  intended  to 
pave  the  way  for  the  opening  of  a  special  asylum  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  House  of  Refuge  for  Women  to  re- 
ceive these  children  and  be  maintained  by  these  payments 
for  board.  There  is  no  reason  that  the  State  should  start 
any  such  institution  and  reUeve  the  counties  of  the  care 
of  those  children.  . 


114  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

On  the  same  page  in  section  11,  it  ought  to  be  provided 
that  the  persons  employed  to  convey  women  from  the  place 
of  conviction  to  the  House  of  Refuge  should  be  women. 

On  page  7,  the  appropriation  of  $150,000  I  should  say 
was  a  very  large  sum  and  should  not  be  made  without 
its  being  specified  what  use  is  intended  to  be  made  of  it. 

Several  years  of  work  were  required  to  secure  the  enact- 
ment of  an  amendment  to  the  law  recommended  by  Mrs. 
Lowell,  that  women  and  not  men  should  be  charged  with 
the  duty  of  conveying  the  young  women  from  the  place 
of  commitment  to  the  Refuge.  Serious  abuses  in  transit 
had  emphasized  the  necessity  for  this  change,  and  these 
compelled  the  Legislature  to  provide  that  women  officers 
should  have  entire  charge  of  delinquent  women  after 
commitment.  Subsequent  laws  have  provided  for  police 
matrons  to  take  charge  of  women  when  arrested,  and  for 
women  probation  officers  to  attend  the  sessions  of  the 
courts  and  secure  the  parole  of  women,  who,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  magistrate,  can  be  restored  to  good  habits  through 
the  aid  and  counsel  of  such  officers. 

It  must  be  evident  from  the  story  told  in  this  chapter 
that  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  more  than  to  any  person,  is  due  not 
only  the  establishment  at  Hudson  of  the  first  reformatory 
for  women  in  New  York  State,  but  also  as  a  consequence, 
the  adoption  of  the  important  and  benevolent  principle 
of  State  care  for  erring  young  women,  who  through  the 
training  and  opportunities  of  such  institutions  may  be 
saved  and  restored  as  useful  members  to  society. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
State  Care  for  Feeble-minded  Women 

The  history  of  the  establishment  of  the  House  of  Ref- 
uge for  Women  at  Hudson  illustrates  the  willingness  of 
the  people  of  the  State  of  New  York  to  assume  any  reason- 
able philanthropic  responsibihty.  Mrs.  Lowell's  thorough 
exposition  of  the  cruelty,  injustice,  and  folly  of  sending 
young  women  of  the  vagrant  and  delinquent  classes  either 
to  the  almshouses  or  the  county  jails,  and  her  campaign 
of  ten  years'  duration,  induced  the  State  to  assimie  the 
guardianship  of  such  young  women  as  Hudson,  Albion, 
and  Bedford  reformatories  now  shelter  in  large  numbers. 

Side  by  side  with  these  unruly  young  women,  Mrs. 
Lowell  found  in  the  almshouses  many  others  of  feeble 
mind,  or  idiotic ;  who  were,  from  weak  will  or  defective 
intellect,  unable  to  distinguish  between  right  and  wrong ; 
for  whose  safety  and  that  of  the  community  greater  cus- 
todial care  was  necessary  than  the  county  almshouses  could 
give.  Simultaneously  with  her  campaign  for  a  State  re- 
formatory for  women,  she  carried  on  another  for  a  State 
custodial  asylum.  Commissioned  to  the  State  Board 
in  1876,  she  was,  as  the  records  show,  at  work  for  such  an 
asylum  the  following  year.  At  a  meeting  of  the  Board 
December  4,  1877,  ''Commissioner  Lowell  presented  a 
paper  in  which  she  had   collected  the  facts  stated  in 

115 


116  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  Secretary's  report  on  pauperism  in  regard  to  vagrant, 
feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates  of  the  almshouses  of 
the  State.  A  discussion  ensued  in  regard  to  the  care  of 
unteachable  idiots,  .  .  .  and  Commissioners  Devereux, 
Letchworth,  and  Lowell  were  appointed  a  committee 
to  consult  with  Dr.  Wilbur,  the  superintendent,  and  with 
the  trustees  of  the  State  Asylum  for  Idiots  at  Syracuse, 
as  to  the  best  means  of  securing  proper  custodial  care  for 
unteachable  idiots.''  One  thousand  copies  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
report  were  ordered  printed. 

Some  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  letters  preserved  in  the  files  of 
the  State  Board  show  that  she  was  continually  at  work 
for  the  future  asylum.  Thus  under  date  of  March  15, 
1878,  she  wrote  to  the  Assistant  Secretary : 

^^ Please  do  not  send  away  those  copies  of  the  'Extracts' 
unless  you  think  that  there  are  plenty  more  for  the 
Legislature. 

"  Will  you  also  remember  that  the  Board  desires  an  ap- 
propriation of  $15,000  for  1878  and  the  same  amount  for 
1879  to  be  used  to  establish  and  carry  on  a  custodial 
asylum  for  idiots,  and  when  you  have  the  opportunity, 
speak  of  the  subject  to  members  of  the  Assembly  and 
Senate." 

Again  on  March  23,  1878,  to  Dr.  Hoyt : 

'^I  thought  you  were  present  when  the  Committee  re- 
ported in  regard  to  the  custodial  asylum  for  idiots.  The 
Board  of  Trustees  of  the  idiot  asylum  at  Syracuse  at  the 
request  of  the  State  Board  has  agreed  by  formal  resolu- 
tion to  take  charge  of  the  proposed  custodial  institution, 
provided  the  State  Board  can  obtain  an  appropriation 


STATE  CARE  FOR  FEEBLE-MINDED  WOMEN    117 

from  the  Legislature  of  fifteen  thousand  dollars  for  1878 
and  the  same  for  1879. 

"  No  place  has  been  yet  decided  on  for  the  institution 
nor  any  particulars  as  to  the  management  agreed  upon. 
The  idea  is  that  the  institution  should  be  an  experiment 
for  the  present,  and  one  proposal  was  to  limit  the  age 
of  female  inmates  to  the  years  between  sixteen  and 
forty-five. 

"The  matter  has  been  presented  by  letter  to  the  Chair- 
man of  the  Committee  on  Ways  and  Means  and  the 
Chairman  of  the  Finance  Committee,  and  I  hope  there 
will  be  no  objection  to  it.  I  am  very  glad  you  have 
already  interested  yourself  about  it  and  also  that  Messrs. 
McGonegal  and  Loomis  have  spoken  of  it  to  their  repre- 
sentatives." 

Victory  in  this  campaign  was  not  long  delayed,  for  at 
the  Board  meeting  of  June  13,  1878,  ''Commissioner 
Lowell,  from  the  Committee  on  a  custodial  asylum  for 
adult  idiots,  submitted  a  report  which  was  read,  accepted, 
and  ordered  filed.  The  report  stated  that  the  efforts  of 
the  Committee  to  secure  an  appropriation  from  the  Legis- 
lature for  the  purposes  of  a  custodial  asylum  had  been 
successful,  that  an  appropriation  of  $18,000  had  been  in- 
serted in  the  supply  bill  for  this  purpose,  and  that  this  sum 
was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Board  of  Managers  of  the 
State  Idiot  Asylum,  who  now  have  the  matter  in  charge." 

Within  less  than  two  years  Mrs.  Lowell  had  successfully 
led  the  State  Board  to  secure  the  adoption  by  the  State, 
as  its  wards,  of  feeble-minded  or  idiotic  young  women, 
who  up  to  that  time  had  been  exposed  to  the  dangers  of 
county  almshouse  care. 


118  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  managers  of  the  State  Idiot  Asylum  at  Syracuse 
acted  with  commendable  energy  under  this  legislative 
sanction,  and  in  the  summer  of  1878  secured  the  lease  of  a 
vacant  seminary  building  at  Newark,  in  Wayne  County, 
which  they  opened  in  September  of  that  year,  with  a 
superintendent,  matron,  and  two  inmates,  as  the  Custodial 
Asylum  for  Feeble-minded  Women.  Mrs.  Lowell  inter- 
ested herself  from  the  beginning  in  the  new  branch,  and 
contributed  in  every  possible  way  to  make  the  experi- 
ment at  Newark  the  success  she  believed  it  should  be. 

At  the  request  of  the  State  Board,  made  by  a  formal 
resolution  at  a  meeting  held  February  12,  1884,  Mrs. 
Lowell  prepared  and  presented  at  the  April  meeting  a 
memorial  to  be  transmitted  by  the  Board  to  the  Legis- 
lature, recommending  ^Hhe  establishment  of  further  and 
definite  provision  for  the  custodial  care  and  sequestration 
of  idiotic  and  feeble-minded  girls  and  women,  for  their 
protection  and  the  protection  of  the  State  from  hereditary 
increase  of  that  class  of  dependents  on  public  charity." 

After  serious  delays  and  opposition,  a  bill  was  passed 
establishing  the  Custodial  Asylum  at  Newark  as  a  per- 
manent and  separate  State  institution,  and  not  as  a  branch 
of  the  asylum  at  Sjrracuse,  which  on  May  14,  1885,  took 
its  place  among  the  statutes  of  the  State.  The  first  sec- 
tion provides  that  ''The  asylum  established  by  the  State 
Board  of  Charities  at  Newark,  Wayne  County,  for  feeble- 
minded women,  is  hereby  continued  and  shall  be  a  body 
corporate,  and  shall  be  known  as  'The  State  Custodial 
Asylum  for  Feeble-minded  Women  at  Newark,  New  York/ 
and  shall  be  under  the  management  and  control  of  a 


STATE  CARE  FOR  FEEBLE-MINDED  WOMEN   119 

Board  of  Trustees  to  be  appointed  as  hereinafter  pro- 
vided, and  shall  be  under  the  general  supervision  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities." 

The  Governor  appointed  a  board  of  nine  managers  which 
organized  at  the  Asylum  June  2,  1885,  and  entered  upon 
the  discharge  of  its  responsible  duties  in  the  administration 
and  development  of  the  new  institution.  The  mana- 
gers have  in  their  annual  reports  to  the  Legislature  traced 
the  healthy  growth  of  the  asylum  and  given  account  of  the 
beneficent  work  carried  on  within  its  walls  for  the  educa- 
tion and  care  of  the  inmates.  Although  appropriations  by 
the  Legislature  for  new  dormitory  cottages  have  not  been 
made  as  rapidly  as  needed,  there  has  been  a  very  sub- 
stantial increase  in  the  size  of  the  asylum  which  on  October 
1,  1910,  sheltered  792  inmates,  classified  according  to  their 
degree  of  intelligence,  in  the  enlarged  original  building, 
and  in  several  outlying  cottages,  erected  on  a  fertile  and 
beautiful  upland  site  of  forty  acres. 

At  the  dedication  of  the  Custodial  Asylum  at  Newark, 
June  10,  1890,  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trustees, 
Hon.  S.  S.  Peirson,  delivered  an  interesting  historical 
address  with  details  relating  to  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  the  institution  not  elsewhere  narrated.  He  re- 
called that  prior  to  1851  the  public  charities  of  the  State  of 
New  York  comprised  only  those  for  the  care  of  the  insane, 
the  deaf  and  dumb,  and  the  blind,  and  outhned  the  growth 
of  a  movement  for  the  assumption  by  the  State  of  the  care 
also  of  the  idiotic  and  the  feeble-minded,  which  resulted  in 
the  establishment  in  1857  of  the  New  York  Asylum  for 
Idiots  at  Syracuse.    Dr.  H.  B.  Wilbur,  Superintendent  of 


120  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  institution  for  many  years,  had  said  in  one  of  his 
first  reports  to  the  Trustees :  ''The  design  and  objects  of 
this  asylum  are  not  of  a  custodial  character/'  and  after 
twelve  years  of  experience,  he  again  reported :  ''There  is 
one  class,  constituting  twenty  per  cent  of  the  whole 
number,  who,  in  the  absence  of  any  proper  custodial  in- 
stitution, are  suffered  to  remain  with  us,''  and  he  recom- 
mended that  the  Willard  Asylum  for  the  Insane  should  be 
allowed  to  receive  them.  The  State  Board  of  Charities 
took  up  substantially  the  same  thought,  and,  continued 
Mr.  Peirson: 

"  The  joint  action  of  the  Syracuse  Board  and  the  State 
Board  is  shown  in  the  following  minutes  of  the  Secretary, 
at  a  special  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  held  at 
Syracuse,  March  12,  1878.  The  object  of  the  meeting 
was  to  be  the  consideration  of  the  question  of  a  custodial 
institution  for  the  idiotic.  A  committee  of  the  Board  of 
Charities,  consisting  of  Mrs.  J.  S.  Lowell,  Mr.  W.  P. 
Letchworth,  and  Mr.  J.  C.  Devereux,  was  heard  at  length 
on  the  subject.  After  full  discussion  by  the  Board  of  the 
whole  matter,  it  was : 

^Resolved,  That  we  are  willing  to  assume  the  respon- 
sibility of  the  management  of  a  custodial  institution.' 

"It  is  well  known  that  Mrs.  J.  S.  Lowell  of  New  York, 
a  lady  well  known  throughout  the  State  and  nation  for 
her  philanthropy,  was  the  moving  spirit.  The  result^  of 
their  joint  labors  was  an  act  of  the  Legislature  in  18S7, 
appropriating  $18,000  'for  the  support  and  maintenance 
of  adult  idiotic  and  feeble-minded  females  at  an  experi- 
mental custodial  asylum,  under  the  management  of  the 
Trustees  of  the  New  York  State  Asylum  for  Idiots/ 


STATE  CARE  FOR  FEEBLE-MINDED  WOMEN    121 

Before  November,  1878,  a  building  intended  originally  for 
a  collegiate  institute  had  been  rented  at  Newark,  and  nine 
inmates  received  from  county  poorhouses  and  eighteen 
from  the  asylum  at  Syracuse." 

Mr.  Peirson  then  related  that  the  experiment  at  Newark 
having  proved  successful,  the  State  Board  and  the  Trustees 
of  the  State  Asylum  at  Syracuse  united  in  recommending 
the  purchase  of  the  site  and  buildings;  but  there  was  a 
difference  of  opinion  as  to  whether  the  institution  should 
be  established  as  a  new  State  charitable  institution  or 
continued  as  a  branch  of  the  State  Asylum  at  Sjracuse. 
The  State  Board  and  Mrs.  Lowell  strongly  supported  the 
former  plan,  but  a  bill  had  been  presented  sanctioning  the 
latter  plan,  and  after  'Hhe  hottest  fight  of  the  session, 
was  defeated.  ...  In  1885,  this  district  was  again  repre- 
sented by  a  Wayne  County  member,  the  Hon.  E.  K.  Burn- 
ham  ;  ...  his  first  act  was  to  introduce  the  bill  that  had 
been  prepared  the  previous  session.  .  .  .  After  fierce  debate, 
and  the  true  merits  of  the  bill  had  been  fully  demonstrated, 
opposition  almost  vanished,  .  .  .  the  Governor's  signa- 
ture in  due  time  was  attached,  and  on  the  14th  day  of  May, 
1885,  one  of  the  noblest  charities  in  the  State  was  per- 
manently estabhshed." 

When  the  asylum  became  a  separate  State  institution, 
the  managers  suggested  that,  as  Mrs.  Lowell  had  carefully 
watched  over  its  experimental  days,  and  was  regarded  by 
them  as  its  founder,  it  should  bear  her  name;  but  she 
decUned  this  honor. 


CHAPTER   IX 

The  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of 

New  York 

"  It  is  an  unhappy  circumstance  that  one  might  give  away  five  hun- 
dred pounds  a  year  to  those  that  importune  on  the  streets  and  not  do 
any  good."  —  Samuel  Johnson. 

The  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  one  of  the  most  useful  organizations  in  the  whole 
range  of  philanthropic  work  in  the  United  States,  was 
founded  in  1882,  on  the  initiative  of  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  and  through  the  continued  efforts  of  Mrs. 
Lowell,  then  a  Commissioner  of  the  Board.  As  early  as 
1843,  the  New  York  Association  for  Improving  the  Con- 
dition of  the  Poor  had  pointed  out  in  its  first  annual  re- 
port, that  ^^  without  cooperation  too  Httle  will  be  gained 
in  the  contest  with  the  forces  of  experienced  and  crafty 
pauperism ;  with  it,  the  walls  of  Jericho  will  fall  down." 
But  no  practical  steps  had  ever  been  successfully  taken 
to  insure  such  cooperation  between  the  charitable  societies 
caring  for  the  poor  in  New  York. 

The  minutes  of  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties held  July  15, 1877,  a  year  after  Mrs.  Lowell  took  her 
seat,  contain  the  following  entry : 

*' Commissioner  Lowell  stated  her  intention  to  investi- 
gate during  the  present  year  the  system  of  administering 
temporary  or  outdoor  rehef  in  the  several  counties  of  the 

122 


THE   CHARITY  ORGANIZATION   SOCIETY      123 

State,  and  submitted  for  the  approval  of  the  Board  a  form 
of  blank  to  be  used  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  from  the 
superintendents  of  the  poor  information  and  statistics 
upon  the  subject." 

Although  the  minutes,  for  more  than  three  years, 
contain  no  reference  to  the  investigation  undertaken  by 
Mrs.  Lowell,  she  no  doubt  made  it,  as  time  permitted, 
for  at  a  meeting  held  July  15,  1881,  she  presented  a 
^'Report  in  Relation  to  Outdoor  ReUef  Societies  in  New- 
York  City."  In  this  paper  she  said  that  seventy-one 
societies,  exclusive  of  dispensaries,  were  asked  by  letter, 
accompanied  by  blank,  to  furnish  information  as  to 
their  mode  of  work;  that  forty  responded;  that  sta- 
tistics respecting  some  others  were  obtained  from 
outside  sources;  and  that  for  this  reason,  the  figures 
given  in  tables  appended  to  the  report  were  incomplete. 
Statistics  for  1880  were  given ;  then  followed  a  classifica- 
tion of  outdoor  reUef  societies  into  four  classes  :  (1)  those 
giving  general  relief;  (2)  the  dispensaries;  (3)  those 
which  care  for  the  sick  only;  (4)  those  which  are 
primarily  educational  and  religious.  Note  is  made  that 
few  church  societies  are  reported,  "although  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  every  church  in  the  city  had  some  organ- 
ized means  of  distributing  alms."  Statistics  were  ob- 
tained from  sixty-six  organizations  in  all,  by  which  it 
appeared  that  in  1880  an  aggregate  of  $546,832  was  dis- 
tributed in  charity  among  the  poor,  while  about  525,155 
cases  were  reported  as  having  received  some  form  of 
charitable  relief.  Then  Mrs.  Lowell  made  the  following 
strong  argument  for  organized  charity : 


124  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

''The  foregoing  figures,  whether  we  regard  them  from  a 
financial  or  humanitarian  point  of  view,  are  suflScient  to 
convince  us  that  so  important  a  business  as  the  administra- 
tion of  charity  has  become  in  New  York  City  requires  to 
be  carried  on  on  business  principles,  if  the  great  evils  of 
wasted  funds  and  corrupted  and  pauperized  citizens  are 
to  be  avoided.  Some  system  is  required  to  enable  these 
various  societies  and  organizations  to  work  in  harmony, 
to  attain  the  end  they  all  aim  at  —  some  plan  by  which 
each  may  be  helped  by  the  knowledge  and  experience  of 
all.  That  there  is  not  already  some  such  system  in 
New  York  is  a  matter  of  regret  to  many  of  the  wisest  and 
most  thoughtful  persons  who  have  practical  experience 
in  dealing  with  the  poor,  especially  as  almost  all  the  other 
large  cities  in  this  country  and  in  England  have  proved 
the  value  of  associated  work  in  diminishing  pauperism 
and  poverty  in  their  midst. ^' 

Mrs.  Lowell  supported  her  plea  by  apt  quotations  from 
the  first  annual  report  of  the  New  York  Association  for 
Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  from  a  paper  pre- 
sented in  1878  by  Mr.  Henry  E.  Pellew  of  that  Associa- 
tion to  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  held  in 
Cincinnati,  and  from  the  reports  of  several  outdoor 
charities  of  New  York  City.  Writing  for  the  three  New 
York  Commissioners  who  formed  the  committee,  Mrs. 
Lowell  concluded  as  follows : 

"We  have  been  able  to  collect  only  very  imperfect 
statistics,  and  we  have  studied  these  statistics  in  a  neces- 
sarily superficial  manner,  and  yet  we  are  led  to  the  irresist- 
ible conclusion  that  there  is  at  present  inevitably  great 
waste  of  energy,  effort  and  money,  owing  to  the  want  of 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      125 

cooperation  among  the  societies  which  administer  the 
charities  of  New  York  City,  while  the  same  cause  operates 
to  encourage  among  the  poor,  pauperism  and  degrada- 
tion. 

"  It  is  becoming  that  the  State  Board  of  Charities  should, 
so  far  as  possible,  assist  in  an  effort  to  remedy  the  evils 
apparent  to  all  thoughtful  students  of  the  facts  presented 
in  this  report,  and  we  propose  the  following  preamble  and 
resolution  for  the  consideration  of  the  Board : 

"  Whereas,  There  are  in  the  City  of  New  York  a  large 
number  of  independent  societies  engaged  in  teaching 
and  relieving  the  poor  of  the  city  in  their  own  homes, 
and 

"  Whereas  J  There  is  at  present  no  system  of  cooperation 
by  which  these  societies  can  receive  definite  mutual  in- 
formation in  regard  to  the  work  of  each  other,  and 

"  Whereas  J  Without  some  such  system,  it  is  impossible 
that  much  of  their  effort  should  not  be  wasted,  and  even 
do  harm  by  encouraging  pauperism  and  imposture,  there- 
fore, 

''Resolved,  That  the  Commissioners  of  New  York  City 
are  hereby  appointed  a  committee  to  take  such  steps 
as  they  may  deem  wise  to  inaugurate  a  system  of  mutual 
help  and  cooperation  between  such  societies." 

Whereupon,  '^on  motion  of  Commissioner  Craig  the 
report  was  accepted  and  Commissioner  Lowell  requested 
to  furnish  a  copy  for  the  annual  report  of  the  Board. 

"  On  motion  of  Commissioner  Stephen  Smith,  the  pre- 
amble and  resolution  proposed  by  Commissioner  Lowell 
in  her  report  were  adopted  by  the  Board,  and  Com- 
missioner Lowell  was  designated  to  act  as  chairman  of 
the  conamittee." 


126  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Under  the  authority  conferred  by  the  foregoing  resolu- 
tion of  the  Board,  the  committee,  under  Mrs.  LowelFs 
leadership,  formed  an  association  of  representative  men 
in  the  City  of  New  York  interested  in  philanthropic  work, 
and  knowing  by  personal  experience  the  waste  of  time, 
energy,  and  money  resulting  from  the  lack  of  cooperation. 
The  active  support  of  such  leading  citizens  as  Abram  S. 
Hewitt,  James  C.  Carter,  Charles  S.  Fairchild,  and  Seth 
Low  was  secured  ,  and  many  leading  clergymen  of  different 
denominations.  Catholic,  Hebrew,  and  Protestant,  gave 
their  counsel  and  aid  to  the  movement.  The  delibera- 
tions of  this  association  or  commission  resulted  in  the 
formation  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City 
of  New  York,  which  was  organized  by  the  election  of 
officers  on  February  8,  1882,  Samuel  Oakley  Vanderpoel, 
M.D.,  being  the  first  President.  The  Legislature  shortly 
afterwards  incorporated  the  society  by  special  act  May 
10,  1882,  and  its  constitution  was  adopted  at  a  special 
meeting  of  the  society  June  5,  1882.  In  drafting  this 
constitution.  Rev.  S.  H.  Gurteen  of  the  Buffalo  Charity 
Organization  Society  was  helpful.  Throughout  the  form- 
ative period  of  the  society's  work  Mrs.  Lowell's  was  the 
directing  mind. 

An  interesting  sidelight  is  thrown  upon  the  earnestness 
and  efficiency  of  her  work  for  the  Charity  Organizatioa 
Society  at  this  time,  and  upon  other  sociological  subjects 
to  which  much  of  her  thought  and  energy  were  afterwards 
given,  in  the  following  extracts  from  letters  written  to 
her  sister-in-law  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw: 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      127 

October  30th,  '81. 
Dear  Annie  : 

The  next  day  was  all  business,  arranging  for  a  small 
meeting  in  the  evening  to  discuss  the  best  means  of  charity 
organization  in  New  York  City.  We  had  invited  several 
clergymen  and  others,  but  had  not  many  present.  Dr. 
John  Hall  (who  I  thought  was  a  CathoHc  priest)  and  Mr. 
Heber  Newton  representing  the  clergy,  Mr.  Pellew  and 
Mr.  Gibbons  the  laity,  and  Mrs.  Rice,  Ellen  Collins  and 
Mrs.  Lockwood  the  femality.  We  discussed  for  an  hour 
and  the  outcome  was  that  they  thought  the  best  way  to 
do  the  work  in  New  York  was  to  have  the  State  Board 
take  up  the  matter,  which  means  a  very  long  and  hard 
struggle  for  the  next  year,  I  suppose.  I  am  ready  to  do 
it,  however,  for  I  think  it  the  most  important  thing  there 
is,  next  to  Civil  Service  Reform,  of  course.  .  .  . 

March  19th,  '82. 
Dear  Annie: 

All  the  week  it  seems  to  me  I  have  been  busy  folding 
up  circulars !  I  agreed  to  see  to  the  distribution  of 
fifteen  thousand  papers  (three  different  kinds)  so  I  have 
had  to  have  the  five  thousand  envelopes  addressed,  and 
on  Friday  and  Saturday  I  had  four  young  women  folding. 
They  were  precious  slow,  I  think,  compared  to  my  rate 
of  work,  and  I  expect  to  have  them  on  hand  for  a  day  or 
two  more  at  least.  It  is  for  our  new  Charity  Organization 
Society,  and  of  course  I  shan't  do  it  again,  but  now  we 
have  no  office  and  no  secretary,  so  I  undertook  it.  I 
don't  know  whether  I  sent  the  circulars  to  you,  but  think 
I  didn't,  so  I  shall.  We  have  a  good  set  of  workers  and 
we  have  just  engaged  the  secretary  of  the  Philadelphia 
society  to  come  to  us,  so  I  think  we  shall  get  along  very 
well,  though  the  work  is  going  to  be  something  tremendous. 


128  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Did  you  see  that  an  old  lady  (Miss  Burr)  has  died  in 
New  York  leaving  three  million  dollars  to  charity?  If 
she  had  only  asked  me  I  would  have  told  her  what  to  do 
with  it.  One  million  ought  to  go  to  public  libraries  and 
one  million  to  build  and  partly  endow  an  insane  asjdum 
for  poor  people  who  aren't  paupers.  Those  two  things 
would  do  an  immense  amount  of  good.  I  wish  I  had  three 
million  !  And  why  couldn't  she  have  left  some  for  model 
lodging-houses,  like  Mr.  Peabody?  She  has  put  a  great 
share  of  it  into  the  common  charities,  orphan  asylums 
and  sick,  and  left  a  good  deal  to  women's  seminaries  out 
west,  which  is  a  good  thing,  of  course.  About  public 
libraries,  however,  with  reading  rooms  and  sitting  rooms 
attached,  I  am  beginning  to  feel  very  strongly.  People 
ought  to  have  decent  places  to  go  to  on  week-day  evenings 
and  on  Sundays.  The  one  Nellie  belongs  to  does  a  great 
deal  of  good  and  thej^  have  S30,000  to  build  with,  but 
that  will  only  put  up  one  building,  and  they  need  six, 
they  say,  and  I  say  twenty  or  thirty.  There  ought  to  be 
such  libraries  all  over  the  city.  .  .  . 

March  28th,  '82. 
Dear  Annie  : 

We  are  working  on  with  our  charity  organization  schemes, 
and  last  week  Gertrude  Rice  (Stevens  j^ou  know)  and  I 
went  round  to  the  various  charities  to  ask  them  to  co- 
operate and  found  all  the  officers  very  cordial  and  ready 
to  do  all  we  wanted.  Gertrude  is  a  most  satisfactory 
person  to  work  with,  very  efficient  and  full  of  sense  and 
no  personal  feelings  to  interfere.  She  takes  a  great  part 
of  the  Association  work  on  herself  when  Louisa  Schuyler 
is  away,  as  at  present,  in  Florida.  Mr.  John  Jay  also 
is  quite  active  in  the  Association  now,  being  Vice-Presi- 
dent. .  .  . 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      129 

May  23d,  '82. 
Dearest  Annie: 

I  have  been  having  a  busy  charity  organization  week  — 
annual  meeting  last  Monday,  committee  meeting  Tues- 
day, hunting  up  workers  Wednesday,  small  conference 
Friday,  and  another  meeting  last  evening.  We  are  doing 
as  well  or  better  than  we  could  have  expected,  finding 
much  interest  and  encouragement.  We  need  more  money 
and  more  people  to  'Hake  hold^'  at  the  top,  however,  and 
lead  the  others.  I  see  many  pleasant  people,  especially 
men,  upon  whom  we  are  trying  to  throw  the  responsibility 
of  this  work,  so  as  to  bring  the  business  faculty  to  bear 
on  the  charity  problem.  What  we  need  are  more  men  of 
leisure  with  the  tradition  of  public  service  like  so  many  of 
the  '^ nobility  and  gentry '^  of  England.  Our  young  men, 
those  that  we  catch,  are  very  good,  but  usually  too  busy. 
However,  I  canH  complain  for  we  have  had  very  good 
fortune  so  far.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  much  runs 
in  families,  however;  the  Roosevelts  and  the  Dodges, 
for  instance,  you  can  depend  on  every  time,  —  they  are 
most  satisfactory  wherever  you  meet  them ;  being  all  rich, 
too,  they  have  time  to  work,  which  is  decidedly  a  good 
thing.  .  .  . 

February  18th,  '83. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

I  begin  ''way  up"  at  the  top  as  if  I  had  a  good  deal  to  say, 
but  I  don't  know  that  I  have,  unless  an  account  of  the 
various  poor  people  who  are  being  brought  to  our  notice 
by  our  Charity  Organization  Society.  They  all  want 
work,  work,  work ;  many  are  widows  with  young  children ; 
many  are  men  who  have  had  accidents ;  so  far,  we  have 
not  really  found  many  "unworthy,"  or  at  least,  those  are 
not  the  ones  that  make  an  impression.    I  more  and  more 


130  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

feel,  the  more  I  see  of  these  suffering  people,  that  things 
are  all  wrong.  It  cannot  be  right  that  men  should  slave 
all  their  days  for  bread  and  butter.  They  do  need  time 
for  some  amusement,  or  at  least  for  rest,  and  they  do 
need  money  enough  for  their  labor  to  enable  them  to  lay 
by  for  a  sick  time  or  for  old  age  without  giving  up  all  that 
makes  life  worth  living. 

Whether  Henry  George  and  Father  are  right  and  that 
plan  will  help  to  make  things  straight  I  can't  say,  but  that 
they  need  putting  straight  I  am  very  sure  of .  .  .  . 

May  5th,  '83. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

I  cannot  think  of  any  news  for  you, — I  don't  do  much 
but  charity  organization  work  and  not  much  of  that,  and 
feel  as  if  I  might  do  a  great  deal  more.  I  am  learning 
all  the  time  and  am  going  to  write  two  or  three  papers 
this  summer,  which  I  hope  will  tend  to  disseminate  right 
views  of  charity,  and  that  seems  to  be  my  only  field  of 
usefulness. 

Common  charity,  that  is,  feeding  and  clothing  people, 
I  am  beginning  to  look  upon  as  wicked !  Not  in  its  in- 
tention, of  course,  but  in  its  carelessness  and  its  results, 
which  certainly  are  to  destroy  people's  character  and 
make  them  poorer  and  poorer.  If  it  could  only  be 
drummed  into  the  rich  that  what  the  poor  want  is  fair 
wages  and  not  little  doles  of  food,  we  should  not  have 
all  this  suffering  and  misery  and  vice. 

Good-by  and  excuse  this  tirade. 

Mr.  Charles  D.  Kellogg,  the  first  general  secretary  of 
the  society,  fresh  from  four  years'  similar  service  in  in- 
augurating the  Society  of  Organized  Charity  of  Philadel- 
phia, says : 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      131 

''I  was  surprised  to  find  at  the  outset  so  many  well- 
devised  and  far-sighted  preliminaries  already  initiated, 
which  were  easily  traceable  to  Mrs.  Lowell's  forethought, 
so  that  the  task  before  me  was  at  once  shorn  of  much  of 
its  anticipated  difficulty.  The  principles  laid  down  at 
the  outset  were  so  wise  as  to  require  but  trifling  new 
adaptation  for  many  years,  and  the  high  character  and 
thoroughly  representative  capacity  of  the  citizens  who 
worked  with  Mrs.  Lowell  to  found  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society,  and  their  unity  of  purpose,  were  such  that 
the  inauguration  of  the  society  was  accompanied  by  far 
less  distrust  and  jealousy  than  was  encountered  in  other 
of  the  large  cities." 

On  October  10,  1883,  Mrs.  Lowell,  as  chairman  of  a 
special  committee  appointed  by  the  State  Board,  pre- 
sented a  report  on  ''The  Organization  and  Work  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New  York," 
in  which  she  communicated  the  facts  above  mentioned, 
relating  to  the  founding  and  incorporation  of  the  society, 
and  continued:  ''Almost  at  the  beginning  of  the  active 
work  of  this  society,  thirty-five  reUef -giving  societies  and 
nine  churches  agreed  to  use  it  as  a  medium  through  which 
to  exchange  information  in  regard  to  their  mutual  bene- 
ficiaries. The  Department  of  PubUc  Charities  and  Cor- 
rection also  agreed  to  give  all  the  information  which  it 
might  have  about  those  who  received  city  coal,  and  mooey 
appropriated  for  the  relief  of  the  adult  blind,  and  about 
those  persons  committed  to  the  penitentiary  and  to  the 
workhouse ;  S2500  for  current  expenses  was  contributed 
before  the  society  had  fairly  begun  work.  .  .  . 

"The  effort  to  get  more  cooperation  has  been  so  far 


132  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

successful  that  on  March  31  the  charitable  agencies  which 
had  agreed  to  report  to  this  society  had  increased  from 
forty-four  to  one-hundred  and  thirty-eight.  They  can 
be  classified  as  follows : 

Thirty  general  societies  for  temporary  outdoor  relief  ; 
Six  national  societies  for  temporary  outdoor  relief; 
Fourteen  asylums  and  institutions  for  indoor  reUef  ; 
Eighty-eight  churches  and    religious  congregations. 

'^  District  committees  have  been  organized  in  six  districts, 
five  of  which  cover  that  portion  of  the  city  on  the  east 
side,  between  Houston  and  Seventy-second  streets,  and 
one  on  the  west  side  from  Houston  to  Fourteenth  streets. 
These  committees  are  composed  of  earnest  men,  sixty- 
eight  in  all,  who  have  faithfully  given  time  and  labor  in 
seeking  a  solution  of  the  great  difficulties  which  surround 
the  questions  of  poverty  and  charity  in  this  city.  Each 
committee  has  a  plain  office  located  conveniently  in  its 
district,  properly  furnished,  and  each  has  its  paid  district 
agent.  The  society  has  found  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
seven  men  and  women  willing  to  act  as  friendly  visitors 
to  those  needing  them.  .  .  .  The  support  given  to  the 
society  in  money  has  been  very  generous.  The  amount 
collected  for  the  general  work  of  the  society  to  March 
31,  1882  inclusive,  was  $15,659.25.  .  .  . 

'^The  most  striking  facts  brought  to  fight  by  the  work 
of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  are  those  relating  to 
the  number  of  people  reported  to  them  as  having  had 
relief  or  being  criminals,  sentenced  to  the  workhouse  or 
penitentiary,  and  those  relating  to  the  houses  in  which 
these  people  live. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      133 

''From  January  1,  1882,  to  October  1,  1883,  the  Dames 
of  about  45,000  individuals  were  reported  to  the  society, 
representing  a  population  (at  the  small  average  of  four 
persons  to  each  family)  of  180,000,  or  more  than  the  popu- 
lation of  Buffalo,  Pittsburg  or  Washington. 

''In  relation  to  the  houses  inhabited  by  this  large  num- 
ber of  persons,  the  annual  report  of  the  society  says : 

'"A  street  register  has  been  made  by  taking  all  the 
names  from  the  alphabetical  cards  and  putting  them  on 
other  cards,  according  to  streets  and  street  numbers. 
These  cards  are  arranged  by  the  street  numbers,  and  each 
street  is  kept  in  a  package  by  itself.  .  .  .  These  reports 
show  that  alms  have  gone  into,  or  that  criminals  have 
resided  at  12,336  street  numbers  during  the  past  fifteen 
months.  .  .  .  The  houses  would  make  a  street  six  and 
five-sixths  times  the  length  of  Broadway  from  the  Battery 
to  Fifty-ninth  Street,  or  thirty-three  miles  in  length. 

"  ^  We  find  also  from  this  street  register  that  alms-getting 
families  tend  to  congregate  together.  A  dozen  such 
families  are  often  reported  as  hving  at  one  street  number. 
The  greatest  number  of  families  reported  from  one  house 
during  fifteen  months  is  eighty-three.  .  .  .  We  believe 
that  this  teaches  that  the  habit  of  looking  to  charity  for 
support  is  contagious,  that  it  rapidly  becomes  the  fashion 
in  localities.' 

"The  above  statement  that  'looking  to  charity  for  sup- 
port is  contagious,'  should  cause  those  who  administer 
charity  funds  to  consider  well  the  wide-spreading  evil 
that  may  follow  the  relief  given  even  to  persons  really  in 
need  and  really  worthy,  and  to  reflect  whether,  after  all, 
it  might  not  be  wiser  and  more  charitable  to  restrict  all 


134  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

direct  relief  to  that  given  inside  of  institutions,  which  has 
this  advantage  that  it  does  not  corrupt  others  while 
reheving  the  sufferer. 

'^Another  feature  of  relief -giving  which  has  been 
brought  to  light  by  the  registration  system  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  is  the  large  proportion  of  able-bodied 
men  who  appear  on  the  lists  of  the  charitable  societies. 
A  circular  of  the  committee  of  the  society  on  cooperation, 
dated  May  18,  gives  the  following  facts : 

'''Of  6964  cases,  4577,  or  over  65  per  cent,  were  men 
with  or  without  children,  and  so  far  as  appeared,  able- 
bodied.  And  but  1908  cases  out  of  the  6964,  or  less  than 
27f  per  cent,  were  widows  with  children,  or  families  where 
the  bread-winner  was  reported  to  be  sick.' 

"I  have  given  this  brief  statement  of  the  work  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  to  show  the  Board  its  general 
character,  because  the  society  is  the  outgrowth  of  the 
action  of  the  Board  taken. two  years  ago." 

The  cordialitj^  and  measure  of  cooperation  between  the 
different  relief  societies  and  the  Charity  Organization  So- 
ciety were  well  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  society  was 
the  guest,  during  the  second  and  third  years  of  its  active 
work,  of  the  Association  for  Improving  the  Condition  of 
the  Poor,  which  generously  gave  the  free  use  of  the  second 
and  third  stories  of  its  house  at  79  Fourth  Avenue,  until 
the  quarters  became  too  narrow  for  the  rapidly  expanding 
needs  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society. 

The  following  letters  to  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  give 
further  illustrations  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  for  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  during  its  early  history. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      135 

May  15th,  '87. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

.  .  .  Mr.  Munroe  belongs  to  a  small  and  modest,  but, 
I  think,  an  important  association  of  which  I  am  president, 
the ' '  Labor  Bureau  Association. ' '  We  have  a ' '  Labor  Test 
Wood  Yard,"  where  men  asking  for  charity  are  given  work, 
and  we  hope  to  develop  it  into  something  very  useful  in 
time.  Mr.  Bannard  ^  (a  lawyer)  and  Henry  Iselin  (the 
youngest  of  the  family  that  used  to  live  next  us  on  Staten 
Island)  and  two  or  three  more  have  worked  very  hard  this 
past  winter  to  make  it  a  success,  and  they  have  formed 
very  good  plans  for  next  year. 

I  consider  it  of  the  greatest  importance,  for  relief  to 
able-bodied  men  is  one  of  the  worst  and  most  dangerous 
phases  of  charity,  and  our  object  is  to  make  this  work 
a  condition  of  relief,  and  the  relief  societies  and  individ- 
uals are  coming  more  and  more  to  use  our  yard.  We 
have  many  safeguards  and  conditions  to  prevent  the 
abuses  that  charity  emplojnnent  is  apt  to  lead  to,  and 
we  go  on  slowly  and  carefully,  but,  I  am  sure  wisely,  and 
I  feel  encouraged  and  happy  about  it.  .  .  . 

'  February  5th,  '88. 

Dearest  Annie  : 

...  I  do  not  think  we  have  had  any  occurrences 
lately, — personally  I  am  doing  nothing  but  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society  work.  I  am  getting  to  be  nothing  but  a 
schoolma'am.  Every  Thursday  at  a  conamittee  meet- 
ing I  talk  and  lecture,  and  I  am  going  to  give  talks  about 
"  Friendly  Visiting ''  among  the  poor  at  various  meetings 
this  month. 

1  Otto  T.  Bannard,  Vice-president  of  theOharity  Organization  Society 
since  1899. 


136  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Last  Thursday  I  read  a  paper  to  a  small  "Working 
Women's  Society,"  which  Miss  Perkins  has  joined  and 
which,  we  hope,  may  do  great  things  in  time.  Many  of 
the  women  spoke  afterwards  and  were  very  interesting 
and  intelHgent.  They  have  had  a  practical  education  in 
life,  which  shows  in  their  faces  which  are  strong  and  in- 
dividual, but  of  course  they  need  a  great  deal  of  advice, 
and  I  am  thankful  that  Miss  Perkins  is  with  them  and 
ready  to  work  with  them.  The  meeting  was  a  small  one 
at  Cooper  Union,  and  Miss  Perkins  presided. 

April  29th,  '94. 
Deaeest  Annie: 

Usually  I  allow  no  business  on  Sunday,  keeping  the 
day  for  friendly  letters,  but  I  have  been  at  it  all  day.  At 
10  to  11  :30  visit  and  talk  with  an  agent  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society;  at  11  :  30  to  1  to  Mary  Putman 
Jacobi's  to  talk  about  Woman  Suffrage  and  a  little  speech 
I  am  to  make  next  Thursday  evening ;  at  3  the  president 
of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  came  to  talk  business, 
and  then  till  6  I  wrote  "C.  O.  S.''  things,  so  I  have  not 
read  nor  written  any  letters  until  now,  8  :  45. 

Besides  this,  I  am  still  busy  finishing  up  our  East  Side 
Relief  work,  and  with  "C.  0.  S.''  affairs.  Meanwhile 
the  trees  are  all  in  leaf,  and  the  spring  days  are  so  tempt- 
ing that  I  ran  down  to  see  Anna  and  Mrs.  Gay  last 
Wednesday.  Anna  was  full  of  an  election  for  School 
Trustees  she  had  just  been  attending  the  night  before, 
voting  for  the  first  time  in  her  life.  Women  can  vote  on 
school  questions  here  and  in  fifteen  other  states.  .  .  . 

Women  have  always  been  influential  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  Society,  and  Mrs.  Lowell  and  her  friend  Mrs. 
Rice,  who  had  been  closely  associated  in  its  work  from 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      137 

the  beginning,  long  served  on  the  Central  Council  and 
Executive  Committee,  Mrs.  Rice  being  the  official  rep- 
resentative of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association. 

Much  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  for  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society  was  so  quietly  done  that  only  those  associated 
with  her  knew  it. 

''She  was,''  says  Mr.  Kellogg,  ''active  in  the  early 
efforts  of  the  Society  to  secure  from  Congress  favorable 
action  upon  a  system  of  postal  savings,  so  successful  in 
England,  which  soon  led  the  Society  to  establish  its  off- 
shoot, now  under  independent  management,  the  Penny 
Provident  Fund,  with  its  more  than  three  hundred  sta- 
tions and  ninety  thousand  depositors. 

"  She  was  equally  earnest  in  the  Society's  efforts  to  in- 
duce the  city  government  to  establish  municipal  lodging 
houses  already  authorized  by  the  State  Legislature,  for 
men  and  women  temporarily  stranded  in  this  great  city; 
failing  in  which,  the  Society  at  its  own  cost  established  its 
own  lodging  house  and  wood  yard  on  West  Twenty-eighth 
Street, — now  so  well  known  to  the  community — which  the 
tardy  city  fathers  supplemented  some  years  later  by  the 
Municipal  Lodging  House  on  First  Avenue,  the  predeces- 
sor of  the  present  institution  in  East  Twenty-fifth  Street, 
said  to  be  the  best  in  the  world  of  its  kind.  The  Society's 
laundry  and  work  rooms  for  unskilled  women  also  were 
results  of  her  earnest  endeavors  to  aid  the  poor  by  educat- 
ing them  up  to  higher  earning  powers,  rather  than  to 
weaken  their  moral  fibre  by  unearned  alms.  In  these 
and  all  related  efforts  she  was  generous  with  her  own 
private  means  to  aid  in  their  fulfilment;  and  many  a 
benevolent  project  was  seconded,  and  many  a  struggling 
soul  was  hfted  into  hope  and  victory  by  her  unrevealed 
liberality.     She  emphasized  the  work  and  strove  to  en- 


138  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

large  the  number  of  the  volunteer  friendly  visitors,  by 
whose  loving  ministries  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  their 
home  life  might  be  elevated,  their  habits  improved,  their 
temptations  lessened,  their  courage  stimulated,  and  their 
social  relations  sweetened.  By  such  contact  she  felt  also 
that  the  producing  causes  of  dependence  and  distress 
could  be  the  better  discovered  and  counteracted/' 

Another  of  her  associates  in  the  work  of  the  society,  Miss 
Alice  M.  Decker,  writes  thus  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  methods  of 
work : 

''Mrs.  Lowell  joined  the  Third  District,  now  Corlears, 
Committee  in  1891,  and  for  over  ten  years  she  was  chair- 
man of  the  sub-committee,  meeting  each  Friday  morning 
for  the  consideration  of  the  applications  for  assistance. 
She  was  most  punctual  and  regular  in  attendance,  remain- 
ing away  only  for  illness,  or  for  some  other  meeting  which 
she  thought  of  equal  importance.  She  gave  to  all  per- 
sons in  distress  the  greatest  thought  and  care,  not  only 
for  their  immediate  need,  but  for  their  future  betterment. 

''Her  very  presence  was  an  inspiration  and  none  could 
attend  the  district  meetings  without  raising  their  desires 
and  trying  to  better  their  life's  work.  Her  judgment, 
arguments  and  personality  made  these  meetings  of  the 
greatest  value ;  her  sympathy  was  so  large  that  she  her- 
self often  said  that  she  could  not  do  friendly  visiting. 
As  an  instance,  when  she  came  to  the  office  one  afternoon 
during  holiday  week,  when  four  widows  with  their  children 
were  enjoying  the  Christmas  tree,  she  immediately  gave 
them  each  some  money  as  she  thought  they  looked  so 
poor.  Frequently  after  attending  a  meeting  she  would 
telephone  after  reaching  home,  fearing  she  had  not  been 
sufficiently  expUcit,  and  thereby  some  person  might  suffer. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      139 

"In  passing  along  the  streets  she  was  constant^  on  the 
alert,  and  no  crippled  child,  or  person  in  need  of  help,  or 
any  \aolation  of  the  law  escaped  her  notice  and  attention. 
I  find  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  tell  how  much  the  district 
committee,  the  agent  and  the  neighborhood  workers 
owe  to  the  judgment,  advice  and  loving  kindness  of  Mrs. 
Lowell." 

Another  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  fellow-workers  in  the  society, 
Mrs.  Louise  F.  Ford,  pays  this  tribute  to  her  associate : 

"I  remember  when  I  first  came  to  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society  in  1888.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  on  the  central 
office  committee  where  I  was  emploj^ed.  In  a  talk 
with  her  about  taking  up  the  work,  she  emphasized  the 
fact  that  it  should  only  be  entered  into  with  a  feeling  of 
consecration.  The  confidence  which  she  placed  in  me  and 
in  any  workers  who  came  in  contact  with  her,  made  the 
responsibility  not  only  more  acceptable,  but  sweeter  and 
a  privilege.  I  think  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  up- 
lifting influences  which  Mrs.  Lowell  created  was  through 
her  belief  in  people,  and  this  was  an  incentive  to  Uve  up 
to  her  high  standard.  Her  tenderness  for  the  poor  and 
troubled,  and  her  ability  to  enter  into  any  part  of  human 
life  which  needed  though tfulness  and  kindness,  as  well  as 
material  help,  were  beyond  any  one^s  else  whom  I  have 
ever  known. 

'^I  am  acquainted  with  a  number  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
beneficiaries  and  it  is  remarkable  what  an  impression  she 
made  upon  them.  They  have  come  to  me  and  talked 
about  her,  and  how  much  she  has  been  a  part  of  their 
lives,  what  an  inspiration  she  was,  and  how  strongly  she 
impressed  upon  them  the  real  meaning  of  true  friendship 
for  those  in  a  different  class  in  life,  but  whose  strong  good 
characters   she   seemed   to   understand   and   appreciate. 


140  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  absolute  justice  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  the  purity  of  her  life, 
the  truth  which  was  imprinted  upon  every  word  she  said 
and  every  look  she  gave,  and  her  every  act,  will  never  be 
effaced  from  the  memories  of  those  who  knew  her.  Her 
example  I  know  will  live  always.'' 

When  Mrs.  Lowell  died  in  1905,  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society  had  for  twelve  years  occupied  offices  in  the 
United  Charities  Building,  erected  on  the  northeast  corner 
of  Fourth  Avenue  and  Twenty-second  Street  by  Mr.  John  S. 
Kennedy  as  a  home  for  this  society  and  other  philanthropic 
organizations.  During  these  years  its  work  had  steadily 
broadened  and  increased.  Among  the  noteworthy  ac- 
tivities of  the  society,  the  Joint  Application  Bureau 
deserves  mention.  This  Bureau,  maintained  in  co- 
operation with  the  Association  for  Improving  the  Con- 
dition of  the  Poor,  greatly  increased  the  facilities  for 
serving  the  poor  and  is  kept  open  every  day  in  the  year 
from  nine  in  the  morning  until  midnight  for  the  receipt 
of  applications  for  relief,  and  for  the  prompt  supply  of 
pressing  needs,  and  in  it  the  care  of  homeless  men  and 
women  by  the  two  organizations  is  concentrated. 

Another  useful  department  is  the  Registration  and  In- 
vestigation Bureau  through  which  confidential  informa- 
tion about  all  the  families  ever  known  to  the  society  is 
available  to  persons  having  a  legitimate  interest  in  them. 
The  society  also  maintains  ten  district  offices  covering 
the  Boroughs  of  Manhattan  and  the  Bronx,  each  with  its 
own  staff  and  under  the  supervision  of  a  local  committee. 
It  still  maintains  its  wood  yard  and  laundry  in  a  separate 
building  at  516  West  Twenty-eighth  Street,  to  provide  tem- 


THE  CHARITY   ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      141 

porary  employment  for  men  and  women.  In  1905,  some 
fifty  thousand  visits  were  made  to  the  poor  in  their  homes 
by  agents  of  the  society  and  about  fifty  thousand  dollars 
was  expended  for  the  relief  of  famiUes  under  its  care. 
The  Tenement  House  Committee  and  the  Committee  for 
the  Prevention  of  Tuberculosis  recently  formed  have  done 
good  work. 

The  Charities  Directory  of  the  City  of  New  York,  one 
of  the  publications  of  the  society,  had  in  1905  reached 
fifteen  annual  editions,  and  Charities^  the  weekly  pub- 
lication of  the  society,  now  continued  as  The  Survey y 
was  in  the  eighth  year  of  its  existence;  the  School  of 
Philanthropy,  begun  in  1898  as  a  summer  course  of  six 
weeks,  was  then  entering  upon  its  second  year  as  a  full 
course  and  had  been  established  upon  a  permanent  basis 
by  the  endowment  of  Mr.  Kennedy.  A  reference  library, 
always  open  to  the  public,  had  grown  until  it  contained 
several  thousand  bound  volumes  and  as  many  pamphlets. 

The  foregoing  outline  of  the  present-day  activities  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society,  under  the  able  ad- 
ministration of  Mr.  Robert  W.  de  Forest,  who  has  now 
been  at  its  head  for  twenty-two  years,  will  convey 
some  idea  of  its  immense  usefulness  not  only  in  the  relief 
of  the  poor  in  the  City  of  New  York,  but  also  in  the  educa- 
tion of  trained  charity  workers,  and  in  the  circulation  of 
instructive  literature  on  current  sociological  topics. 

For  a  longer  period  than  she  uninterruptedly  devoted 
to  any  other  branch  of  her  philanthropic  work,  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  actively  and  closely  identified  with  the 
Charity  Organization  Society.     She  died  on  the  twenty- 


142  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

fourth  anniversary  of  the  meeting  of  the  State  Board  at 
which  the  first  steps  were  taken  for  its  formation.  ''On 
her  initiative/'  said  Edward  T.  Devine,  now  the  General 
Secretary  of  the  Society,  ''it  came  into  existence,  and 
since  its  birth  in  1882,  she  has  been  its  guiding  spirit 
and  its  most  faithful,  untiring  and  efficient  member. 
She  served  continuously  on  its  Central  Council  and  its 
Committee  on  District  Work,  and  at  different  times  also 
on  other  committees." 

In  the  development  and  expansion  of  the  work  of  the 
society,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  always  active  and  influential, 
and  it  is  impossible  either  to  overestimate  the  value  of 
her  service,  or  the  usefulness  of  the  society  to  the  city, 
in  the  general  progress  in  charitable  methods  and  resources 
since  1882,  when  on  her  initiative,  the  steps  were  taken 
which  brought  it  into  being. 

Duties  of  Friendly  Visitors  ^ 

"  Charity  organization  is  not  a  work  to  which  any  man  should  put 
his  hand,  unless  he  is  prepared  to  give  to  it  some  measure  of  devotion.'* 

This  is  the  motto  I  should  be  glad  to  see  adopted  by  our 
society,  for  it  contains  a  truth  which  we  must  all  bear  in 
mind,  whether  we  be  members  of  the  central  council  or 
of  the  district  committees,  or  friendly  visitors.  It  is 
hard  work  which  we  have  undertaken;  work  requiring 
time,  and  thought,  and  patience  and  judgment.  I  have 
been  asked  to  speak  of  the  duties  of  friendly  visitors, 

1  Printed  by  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  May,  1883. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      143 

and  though  I  shall  be  able  to  make  only  a  few  suggestions 
on  this  all-important  subject,  still  I  am  glad  to  do  it, 
and  I  must  say  at  the  outset  that  the  best  success  of  our 
Charity  Organization  Society  will  depend  eventually  upon 
the  devotion  and  the  wisdom  of  the  members  of  our 
district  committees  and  their  visitors.  We  at  the 
central  office  may  form  all  sorts  of  wise  plans,  and  may 
do  the  very  best  we  can,  but  the  practical  carrying  out 
of  the  principles  of  the  society  depends  on  the  district 
workers.  It  is  they  who  come  into  personal  contact 
with  those  we  seek  to  aid,  and  it  is  they  whose  influence 
will  raise  or  degrade  them. 

And  first,  we  must  make  a  distinction  between  classes 
of  cases.  We  are  constantly  coming  on  Chronic  Cases,  so 
to  speak,  old  or  permanently  sick  people  who  can  never 
hope  to  earn  a  Hving.  The  only  thing  to  be  done  for 
such,  unless  we  simply  pass  them  by,  as  perhaps  in  the 
early  stages  of  our  work  we  must,  is  to  provide  for  them 
permanent  relief  of  one  kind  or  another  —  either  put  them 
into  a  suitable  institution  or  secure  from  individuals  such 
regular  reUef  as  will  place  them  above  the  need  of  casual 
help,  and  then  see  to  it  that  they  do  not  beg. 

Then  come  cases  of  temporary  sickness.  Here  the 
object  must  be  to  effect  a  cure  as  soon  as  possible.  Per- 
haps a  change  of  rooms  may  be  necessary;  perhaps  the 
sick  member  of  the  family  should  be  removed  to  a  hospital  ; 
perhaps  work  must  be  suggested,  and,  if  possible,  found 
for  some  of  the  others.  Each  case  will  need  different  treat- 
ment, and  many  different  societies  and  people  may  have 
to  be  asked  to  help  in  the  cure.     The  great  danger  to  be 


144  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

avoided  is  the  formation  of  permanent  habits  of  depend- 
ence by  means  of  the  temporary  help  procured. 

The  third  class,  out  of  work  cases,  are  the  most  difficult 
of  all,  and  the  most  important,  perhaps.  ^'The  distress 
of  those  capable  of  work,''  to  quote  from  an  account  of 
the  Elberfeld  system,  ''is  not  to  be  treated  as  if  it  were 
an  incurable  disease,  and  as  if  it  were  only  necessary  to 
keep  the  patient  aUve  from  day  to  day,  no  matter  how ; 
but  as  an  exceptional  condition,  the  cure  of  which  should 
be  carefully  and  scientifically  considered,  that  the  patient 
may  return  to  the  normal  condition  of  self-support.''  I 
have  said  these  out  of  work  cases  are  the  most  difficult 
of  all,  and  they  are  so  because  the  suffering  is  often  very 
real  and  the  family  in  much  distress  of  body  and  mind, 
and  yet  the  chances  of  doing  a  permanent  injury  to  the 
character  by  unwise  action  are  a  hundred  to  one. 

And  here  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  hard 
question  of  rehef-giving.  The  first  impulse  of  many 
visitors  is  to  exclaim :  ''If  I  cannot  give  refief,  what  can  I 
do  ?  How  can  people  be  helped  who  are  hungry  and  cold 
unless  they  can  be  fed  and  warmed?"  It  seems  at 
first  as  if  there  could  be  no  answer,  and,  provided  the 
hunger  and  cold  do  actually  exist,  they  must,  of  course, 
be  first  removed.  Our  visitors  must  remember,  however, 
that  usually  the  hunger  and  cold  are  not  so  pressing  or  so 
sharp  as  they  are  represented  to  be;  that  the  suffering 
family  is  not  living  in  a  desert,  but  among  human  beings, 
who  do  not  look  on  and  see  their  next-door  neighbors 
starve ;  that,  as  a  fact,  the  daily  supplies  are  forthcoming 
day  by  day.    They  must  judge  more  by  their  eyes  and 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      145 

intellects  than  by  their  hearts,  and  if  they  see  stout  and 
healthy-looking  people,  with  children  who  appear  good- 
natured  and  in  a  measure  contented,  they  must  accept 
the  statement  that  there  has  been  nothing  eaten  for  twenty- 
four  hours  rather  as  a  fanciful  way  of  describing  the  general 
poverty  than  as  the  exact  truth.  However,  whether  they 
feel  constrained  to  supply  temporary  rehef  or  not,  they 
must  bear  in  mind  that  the  final  aim  of  the  visitor  must 
always  be  to  discover  by  inquiry,  thought  and  consultation, 
some  means  of  helping  the  family  permanently  on  to  its 
feet ;  and  they  must  remember  that,  if  it  can  possibly  be 
avoided,  it  is  well,  while  the  plans  for  permanent  improve- 
ment are  being  matured,  not  to  procure  temporary  relief 
from  any  source,  because  the  fact  that  it  is  supplied  will 
tend  merely  to  keep  up  false  hopes  in  the  hearts  of  the  re- 
cipients that  something  will  happen  to  enable  them  to 
avoid  the  great  exertion  which  may,  perhaps,  be  required 
of  them  in  seconding  the  plans  made  for  their  good.  One 
distinguishing  trait  of  almost  all  people  who  have  sunk  low 
enough  to  have  to  seek  alms  is  the  baseless  hope  that  in  a 
week  or  so  things  will  be  sure  to  go  better  with  them,  and 
any  reUef  given  them  merely  serves  to  confirm  them  in  this 
shiftless  '^waiting  for  something  to  turn  up."  A  visitor 
can  usually,  if  he  or  she  will  only  take  trouble  enough,  find 
some  sort  of  means  of  letting  the  head  or  some  member  of 
the  suffering  family  earn  a  dollar  to  provide  for  their  im- 
mediate necessities.  Some  chopping  of  wood,  scrubbing  of 
floors,  sweeping  the  yard,  a  dozen  clothes  to  wash,  errands 
to  run,  anything  to  avoid  teaching  the  dreadful  lesson  that 
it  is  easy  to  get  a  day's  Uving  without  working  for  it. 


146  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  first  requirement  for  a  good  visitor  is  that  he  should 
really  give  his  mind  to  the  case  of  the  family  placed  in  his 
charge,  that  he  should  study  it  in  every  way,  considering 
what  plans  he  himself  would  be  likely  to  try  were  he  in 
a  like  situation.  Often  it  is  brains  more  than  anything 
else  that  is  lacking  to  the  poor,  and  the  visitor  must  not 
only  supply  the  brains  in  the  formation  of  plans,  but  must 
spend  time  and  hard  work  in  persuading  his  poor  friend 
that  the  plans  are  the  best  that  are  practicable  for  him. 
A  great  part  of  the  work  will  be  educational ;  the  visitor 
will  find  extravagance,  shiftlessness,  perhaps  vice.  All 
sorts  of  influences  must  be  brought  to  bear.  We  are  for- 
bidden to  give  any  spiritual  teaching,  in  order  to  avoid 
all  suspicion  of  proselyting,  but  one  of  the  first  things 
a  visitor  should  do  is  to  find  out  what  church  the  family 
even  nominally  belongs  to,  and  try  to  strengthen  its  re- 
lations with  that  church.  Should  there  be  no  response 
on  the  part  of  the  family  to  these  efforts,  he  should  go 
to  some  member  or  to  the  minister  of  that  church,  that 
he  may  search  them  out  and,  if  possible,  bring  them  back 
into  their  own  fold  again. 

One  very  important  point  for  a  visitor  to  aim  at  is  to 
find  out  all  about  the  man  of  the  family,  where  there  is  one. 
Charities  and  charitable  people  are  too  prone  to  deal  ex- 
clusively with  the  woman,  accepting  her  statement  that 
the  man  is  looking  for  work.  Now,  perhaps  he  is  and  per- 
haps he  is  not ;  but  it  should  be  fully  established,  first, 
that  he  has  no  work ;  second,  that  he  would  be  glad  to  get  it. 
The  man  and  the  woman  should  be  seen  and  advised  with 
together  in  regard  to  their  present  condition  and  future 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      147 

plans.  Where  there  is  a  real  desu-e  to  help  themselves, 
the  man  will  be  ready  to  accept  his  proper  place  as  head 
of  the  family,  responsible  for  its  support ;  and  where  he 
keeps  out  of  the  way  and  lets  his  wife  do  the  running  and 
the  begging,  the  visitor  may  well  suspect  that  all  is  not  as 
it  should  be. 

In  regard  to  seeking  for  work,  a  visitor  can  often  help 
with  suggestions  and  letters  of  introduction,  after  he 
thoroughly  knows  his  family ;  but,  as  a  rule,  no  one  has  so 
much  time  to  look  for  work  as  the  man  himself.  If  he  is 
ready  to  work  ten  hours  a  day,  let  him  spend  the  ten  hours 
looking  for  work.  The  great  lesson  we  want  to  teach 
people  is  to  depend  on  themselves,  and  not  to  look  to  any 
one  for  anything  except  friendly  advice  and  counsel. 

Another  matter  to  be  considered  in  connection  with  work 
is  that  anything  which  encourages  the  wife  of  an  able- 
bodied  man  to  become  the  breadwinner  of  the  family  is 
injurious.  A  woman's  whole  time  is  not  too  much  for  her 
to  devote  to  the  care  of  her  children ;  and  the  children  of 
decent,  industrious  women  often  grow  up  to  be  vagabond 
and  vicious  because  their  mother  has  had  to  leave  them  to 
the  education  of  the  streets.  Where  the  woman  is  a  widow, 
this  becomes  sometimes  a  sad  necessity,  from  the  evil 
effects  of  which  charity  may  well  help  her  to  guard  her 
children;  but  where  there  is  a  husband  and  father  able 
to  work,  he  should  feel  it  a  disgrace  that  his  overburdened 
wife  should  be  called  upon  to  earn  even  fifty  cents  a  week 
toward  the  support  of  the  family.  After  the  slack  time 
is  past  and  the  man  is  again  at  work,  the  opportunity  comes 
for  the  visitor  to  make  special  efforts  to  persuade  the 


148  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

family  to  prepare  for  the  future  and  to  lay  by  for  the  idle 
time  of  the  next  year;  he  can  then  inculcate  lessons  in 
economy  and  in  saving  which  may  be  the  means  of  lifting 
the  family  permanently  on  to  a  higher  level  than  they 
would  ever  have  attained  without  his  friendly  encourage- 
ment. If  he  has  made  them  really  look  upon  him  as  their 
friend,  they  will  be  willing  to  put  their  weekly  savings 
into  his  hands,  so  that  they  need  not  be  tempted  to  spend 
them.  No  family  that  has  been  in  want,  and  been  helped 
out  of  it,  should  be  deserted  by  their  visitor  until  he  has 
seen  them  safely  past  the  dangerous  period  in  the  following 
year. 

An  unending  field  of  labor  for  visitors  is  to  be  found  in 
the  instruction  of  children  and  the  encouraging  of  their 
parents  to  put  them  at  trades  requiring  skill,  which  will 
insure  them  a  fair  livelihood.  Poverty  and  crime,  in  our 
country  at  least,  are  to  be  found  almost  entirely  among 
the  people  who  have  no  habits  of  steady  occupation  and 
no  regular  means  of  earning  a  hving.  They  can  do  any- 
thing, they  say,  which  usually  turns  out  to  mean  noth- 
ing. Now,  if  the  children  in  every  shiftless  family  could 
be  taught  to  do  some  one  thing  well,  could  be  taught 
even  to  keep  their  own  lodgings  in  decent  order  and  to  live 
economically,  a  great  step  would  be  gained.  The  visitors 
might  perhaps  persuade  their  own  servants  to  train  a 
young  girl  to  fit  her  to  be  a  good  servant  and  to  earn  good 
wages. 

Widows  and  women  with  disabled  husbands  who  have 
young  children  form  a  class  by  themselves,  and  may 
receive  direct  relief  if  only  it  is  guarded  and  graded  in  ac- 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      149 

cordance  with  their  circumstances.  The  condition  of  a 
woman  who  must  perform  the  part  of  both  father  and 
mother  to  her  children  is  indeed  pitiful,  and  here  is  a  field 
where  a  friendly  visitor  may  expend  care  and  thought 
for  years  perhaps.  The  right  plan  to  adopt  is  the  follow- 
ing:  1st,  Find  what  the  woman  can  hve  on  decently. 
2d,  What  she  can  earn  without  neglecting  her  children. 
3d,  Secure  for  her  regular  help,  which  she  can  depend 
on  receiving  on  a  fixed  day  of  the  week  or  month,  and 
which  is  to  be  sent  to  her,  so  that  she  need  waste  no  time 
in  going  for  it,  and  which,  with  her  own  labor,  will  make 
up  the  sum  absolutely  required  for  her  family.  4th,  As 
the  children  come  to  an  age  to  help,  see  that  they  are 
trained  to  do  so  in  the  best  way,  and  gradually  diminish 
the  reUef  imtil  it  is  entirely  withdrawn. 

A  very  good  plan  with  widows  with  young  children  is 
to  induce  two  to  live  together ;  one  to  go  out  to  work,  the 
other  to  care  for  both  famihes  at  home.  This  saves  rent 
and  other  expenses,  and  the  children  are  not  neglected  and 
allowed  to  grow  up  worthless  and  idle.  In  such  cases 
the  amount  of  outside  aid  needed  is  reduced  to  the 
minimum. 

The  difficulty  is,  not  that  there  are  not  hundreds  of 
ways  of  helping  people,  but  that  we  will  not  take  the 
trouble  to  carry  them  out.  If  you  choose  to  say:  "I 
can't  be  bothered  by  giving  my  clothes  out  to  be  washed ;" 
''I  can't  have  a  man  coming  every  day  to  run  errands;'' 
*'I  can't  have  a  Httle  girl  in  my  house  breaking  the  things 
and  troubling  the  servant,"  that  is  all  right  perhaps. 
You  must  do  what  you  think  best,  but  do  not  deceive 


150  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

yourself  by  saying  that  you  do  not  know  how  to  help 
poor  people  without  giving  them  money.  Acknowledge 
frankly  that  you  will  not  or  cannot  take  the  trouble  to  do 
it,  and  that,  consequently,  you  have  not  the  faculty  to  be 
a  friendly  visitor  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society. 
:  Finally,  all  of  us  who  ever  attempt  to  have  any  dealings 
with  the  poor  would  do  well  to  bear  in  mind  the  follow- 
ing admonition  of  Miss  Octavia  Hill,  '^Let  us  never  weakly 
plead  that  what  we  do  is  benevolent ;  we  must  ascertain 
that  it  is  really  beneficent  too." 

Among  Mrs.  LowelFs  unpublished  papers  are  copies 
of  five  addresses  she  delivered  in  1888  to  the  children  of 
a  Sunday  school  in  Harlem.  Although  written  for  the 
comprehension  of  youthful  minds,  they  contain  many 
valuable  observations  on  '^  Charity  and  Relief-giving.'' 
The  first  only  of  the  series  is  here  included. 

Sunday  School  Talk  to  Children 

I  have  gladly  availed  myself  of  the  invitation  of  your 
Superintendent  to  meet  you  for  a  few  Sundays  to  talk 
about  ^^Our  Duties  in  Connection  with  Charity  and  Rehef- 
giving,''  because  I  believe  these  duties  to  be  very  definite, 
very  plain  and  very  imperative,  and  I  know  that  there  is 
a  wide  difference  of  opinion  in  regard  to  these  duties 
among  intelligent  and  benevolent  people.  I  am  glad  to 
know  also,  however,  that  these  differences  of  opinion  are 
to  be  found  only  among  intelligent  people  who  have  not 
given  much  thought  to  these  subjects,  while,  on  the  con- 
trary, among  the  students  of  the  problems  presented  by 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      151 

charity  and  relief-giving  there  are  practically  no  differ- 
ences of  opinion. 

Today  I  want  to  clear  the  ground  by  giving  an  ex- 
planation of  my  terms,  and  by  telling  you  what  it  seems 
to  me  should  be  our  attitude  of  mind  and  heart  in  dealing 
with  these  subjects.  I  have  used  the  two  terms  ^'Char- 
ity" and  "Relief -giving/^  which  are  often  accepted  as 
synonymous,  because  to  me  they  mean  widely  different 
things,  sometimes  diametrically  opposite  things,  although 
undoubtedly  relief-giving  is  frequently  a  part  of  charity. 
Charity  is  wishing  well  and  doing  good  to  those  who 
have  no  legal  claim  upon  us.  ReUef-giving  is  suppljdng 
them  with  material  help,  food,  clothing,  etc.,  which 
may  be  done  without  either  wishing  them  well  or  doing 
them  good. 

Under  these  definitions,  ''PubUc  Charity"  is  a  mis- 
nomer, if  it  is  intended  to  describe  by  that  term  the  reUef 
of  a  certain  part  of  the  community  by  a  tax  on  the  rest. 
The  money  raised  by  taxation  for  the  support  of  those  in 
want  is  simply  a  public  fund,  paid  from  self-interest  in 
the  same  spirit  and  for  the  same  purpose  as  the  far  larger 
amounts  spent  for  the  pohce.  It  is  for  the  pubUc  pro- 
tection, and  there  is  no  element  of  charity  in  it,  since  the 
persons  whose  money  is  spent  are  actuated  by  no  feeling 
of  kindliness  towards  those  who  receive  it,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  pay  their  taxes  grudgingly  and  in  an  unwilling 
spirit.  Public  officers  not  unfrequently  justify  them- 
selves in  extravagance  in  the  use  of  public  funds  for  the 
relief  of  the  poor,  on  the  ground  that  they  must  be  chari- 
table, but  this  they  cannot  be.    No  one  can  be  charitable 


152  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

with  another  person's  money.  A  person  in  expending 
pubHc  funds  may  be  honest  and  conscientious ;  he  cannot 
be  charitable,  and  the  sooner  it  is  understood  that  ex- 
travagant expenditure  of  the  people's  money  is  no  charity, 
but  a  breach  of  trust,  the  better  it  will  be  for  the  com- 
munity. 

Public  relief,  then,  must  of  necessity  lack  one  of  the 
requisites  of  charity,  for  the  givers  of  it  do  not  wish  well 
to  those  who  receive  it.  It  often  lacks  also  the  other 
requisite,  for  it  not  infrequently  does  harm  and  not  good. 
It  is  given  in  two  ways :  to  families  in  their  homes,  called 
outdoor  relief;  and  to  individuals  in  public  institu- 
tions, called  indoor  relief.  When  given  to  families, 
it  too  often  acts  as  a  premium  on  idleness  and  vice,  and 
ends  by  creating  generation  after  generation  of  paupers, 
who  look  to  the  public  fund  as  to  a  family  inheritance  upon 
which  they  may  always  depend.  In  some  of  the  counties 
of  New  York  the  fifth  generation  of  paupers  is  now  receiv- 
ing public  relief. 

ReHef  in  public  institutions  may  do  good  if  properly 
administered,  and  it  certainly  has  its  element  of  charity, 
though  the  charity  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  paid  by  the  tax-payers.  It  is  found 
among  the  paid  officers  and  subordinates  who  spend  their 
lives  in  unselfish  work  for  those  committed  to  their  charge. 
It  was  found  in  the  little  Irish  woman  who  for  eighteen 
years,  at  a  salary  of  eight  dollars  a  month,  received  and 
washed  and  cleaned  every  woman  who  came  into  the 
almshouse  on  BlackwelFs  Island,  so  delighted  to  be  able 
to  change  disorder  into  order,  to  make  clean  that  which 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      153 

was  unclean,  that,  when  she  died,  I  was  sure  that  she 
would  hear :  ^^  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant ;  thou 
hast  been  faithful  over  a  few  things,  I  will  set  thee 
over  many  things,'^  and  would  receive  some  great  work 
of  purification  to  do. 

There  was  charity  in  the  heart  of  the  matron  at  the 
Lunatic  Asylum,  an  Irishwoman  too,  who  for  thirty  years 
gave  all  her  time  and  thought  to  the  poor  benighted 
creatures  around  her,  teaching  and  helping  them.  There 
is  charity  among  the  mu*ses  who  are  faithful  and  full  of 
patience  with  the  lunatics,  the  crippled,  the  idiots,  bear- 
ing almost  more  than  could  be  expected  were  these  un- 
fortunates of  their  own  blood.  No  one  should  be  unmind- 
ful of  the  great  charity  to  be  found  among  all  these. 

Besides  pubUc  rehef  of  these  two  kinds,  we  have  private 
rehef -giving ;  that  is,  money  given  by  those  who  do  own  it, 
to  those  whom  they  do  wish  to  help ;  very  different  from 
public  relief,  and  often  as  I  have  said,  a  part  of  charity, 
but  not  always,  by  any  means ;  for  charity,  besides  being 
benevolent,  must  also  be  beneficent ;  it  must,  as  I  have 
said,  not  only  wish  well,  but  it  must  do  good ;  and  reUef- 
giving  is  not  at  all  sure  to  do  this ;  it  may  often  do  —  it 
does  often  do  incalculable  harm,  harm  so  cruel  that  the 
benevolent  relief-givers  would  be  appalled  could  they 
realize  it. 

You  will  see  now  why  I  have  made  my  subject  cover 
both  charity  and  relief-giving;  charity,  the  wishing  well 
and  doing  good  to  those  who  have  no  legal  claim  upon  us ; 
pubHc  reUef-giving,  which  can  never  be  charity,  and  pri- 
vate rehef-giving,  which  may  or  may  not  be  charity. 


154  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

I  have  divided  our  subject  into  three  parts,  one  of  which 
we  shall  consider  on  each  of  the  three  following  Sundays. 
They  are  as  follows : 

'^Our  opportunities  for  Charity/' 

'^The  dangers  of  Relief -giving/' 

''Our  personal  obligation  to  those  in  trouble." 

And  now  I  want  to  speak  of  what  I  believe  should  be  our 
attitude  of  mind  and  heart  when  we  undertake  to  study 
these  questions. 

First,  we  should  always  regard  them  in  relation  to  the 
welfare  of  the  whole  community,  not  as  being  con- 
cerned merely  with  the  people  whom  we  think  we  want 
to  help,  or  whom  we  suppose  ourselves  to  be  helping. 
It  is  the  habit,  I  fear,  of  a  great  many  people  to  divide  the 
population  of  the  world,  of  the  country,  of  the  state  or  of 
the  city  into  two  classes :  the  rich  and  the  poor ;  and 
they  have  a  theory  that  the  rich  support  the  poor;  but 
Mr.  Hewitt  once  gave  the  correct  view  in  the  following 
remarks  made  at  a  public  meeting  of  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society  of  this  city: 

''Here  are  the  rich  and  there  are  the  poor,  separated 
by  the  great  mass  of  honest,  hard-working,  prosperous, 
well-to-do  people.  The  problem  is  to  reduce  the  number 
of  the  poor  by  finding  channels  of  occupation  for  them, 
so  that  they  maj'-  not  feed  and  prey  upon  the  product  of 
the  industrious.  The  problem  is  to  take  the  idle  rich  — 
they  are  not  all  idle,  but  some  are  —  and  to  develop  in 
them  the  sense  of  trust,  that  they  hold  these  profits  which 
have  been  taken  from  the  earnings  of  the  great  mass,  and 
are  taken  every  day  from  the  earnings  of  the  great  mass 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      155 

(for  you  know  perfectly  well  that  whatever  the  rich  have 
has  to  be  earned  day  by  day  by  those  who  work)  to  develop 
in  them  a  sense  of  trust,  and  so  to  organize  the  channels 
of  communication  between  those  who  are  consumers 
otherwise  of  the  fruits  of  human  industry,  and  these 
deserving  laborers  who  have  drifted  out  of  the  ordinary 
channels  of  occupation ;  —  to  bring  these  two  agencies  to- 
gether, and  make  them  useful  to  each  other  so  that  the 
great  working  class  may  accumulate  still  more,  and  not  be 
shorn  of  their  proper  earnings,  as  they  otherwise  will  be, 
by  the  consumption  of  the  poor  and  of  the  rich/' 

Mr.  Hewitt  is  right,  I  am  sure,  in  the  classification  he 
makes  of  the  population  of  the  world ;  —  in  the  centre 
the  great  mass  of  workers,  on  each  side  the  consuming 
idlers.  This  great  mass  of  workers,  whether  by  hand  or 
brain  makes  no  difference,  are  those  who  keep  the  world 
going,  who  clothe,  feed,  house,  teach  and  train  them- 
selves and  everybody  else ;  —  they  are  the  only  people 
who  are  needed ;  —  the  idle  poor  and  the  idle  rich  live  on 
them,  and  are  equally  dangerous  and  troublesome  on 
whichever  side  they  may  happen  to  be  consuming  the 
product  of  the  workers. 

Now,  the  interests  of  the  workers  are  the  important 
thing  to  be  considered,  both  because  they  so  far  out- 
number the  others,  and  also  because  it  is  they  upon  whom 
all  depend,  it  is  they  whom  the  community  has  to  thank 
for  all  it  is  and  all  it  has,  and  whatever  time  or  thought 
we  may  be  giving  to  the  idle  poor  or  to  the  idle  rich,  our 
constant  object  must  be  to  relieve  the  workers  of  the  bur- 
den of  their  support,  for  the  sake  of  the  workers  them- 


156  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

selves,  and  for  the  sake  of  the  idlers  as  well,  whose  man- 
hood and  womanhood  demand  that  they  be  raised  from 
this  pitiful  and  degrading  dependence  in  which  they  live. 

Everything  we  do  and  abstain  from  doing  should  be 
with  the  view  of  diminishing  the  ranks  of  the  idlers  and 
adding  to  the  great  army  of  workers.  We  must  always 
keep  in  mind  a  picture  of  the  normal,  the  ideal  com- 
monwealth, where  all  its  members  are  useful,  supporting 
themselves  and  adding  to  the  common  stock.  We  must 
resent  and  refuse  to  accept  as  permanent  a  condition 
of  things  where  some  of  the  people,  because  of  illness, 
because  of  incompetence,  because  of  vice,  are  dependent 
on  the  rest. 

Instead  of  being  proud  of  our  hospitals  we  should  look 
upon  them  with  shame  as  showing  how  many  sources  of 
ill-health  are  to  be  found  in  our  city;  oik  asylums  for 
children  should  cause  us  to  hang  our  heads  because  of  the 
thousands  of  homes  destroyed  by  ill-doing,  the  parents 
deserting  their  children  and  casting  off  the  first  duties  of 
life.  Let  us  always  remember  that  whatever  the  cause  of 
dependence  (I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of  dependence  other 
than  that  which  is  natural  and  right,  of  children  upon 
parents  and  of  parents  upon  children)  the  state  is  bad  and 
is  productive  of  bad  results.  A  man  ought  to  support 
himself,  and  he  ought  moreover  to  support  his  family; 
and  those  two  simple  facts  are  never  to  be  forgotten 
by  any  one  who  tries  to  help  his  fellow-man. 

Every  idler  transformed  into  a  worker  is  a  double  gain, 
of  course,  for  not  only  is  the  common  stock  relieved  of 
the  support  of  one  dependent,  but  he,  in  his  turn,  adds 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      157 

to  that  stock,  and  thus  there  is  more  for  everybody, 
which  is  not  an  unimportant  consideration,  since  there 
is  not  now  enough  wealth  in  the  world  to  make  every- 
body decently  comfortable. 

So  much  for  oxu*  attitude  of  mind  in  regard  to  these 
questions.  Equally  important  is  our  attitude  of  heart. 
We  must  beheve  in,  we  must  feel,  the  ^'Brotherhood  of 
Man."  We  cannot  be  just,  we  cannot  be  charitable,  we 
cannot  be  anything  we  should  be  without  this.  If  we  talk 
of  'Hhe  poor,"  if  we  say  what  'Hhey  do,"  if  we  judge 
ourselves  by  one  standard  and  our  brothers  by  another, 
we  cannot  help  them.  To  feel  the  brotherhood  of  man 
is  the  first,  the  second  and  the  third  requisite.  This  is 
what  makes  Walter  Besant's  book  so  full  of  sympathy; 
this  is  the  secret  of  Tolstoi's  power.  They  each  feel  the 
brotherhood  of  man  and  each  is  inspired  by  it,  though 
the  practical  results  are  so  different. 

The  Russian  sees  that  men  are  brothers,  and  says: 
''Education  and  cleanliness  keep  us  from  our  brothers; 
we  must  be  near  to  them ;  they  are  dirty  and  ignorant ; 
we  must  break  down  the  wall;  we  must  be  dirty  and 
ignorant  too."  He  is  appalled  by  the  mass  of  dirt  and 
ignorance  and  sees  no  other  hope  of  getting  near  to  his 
brothers  but  to  sink  to  their  level. 

The  Englishman  sees  that  men  are  brothers ;  he  says : 
''Dirt  and  ignorance  keep  us  from  our  brothers ;  we  must 
be  near  to  them ;  we  must  break  down  the  wall ;  we  must 
make  them  clean  and  educate  them."  It  is  the  English- 
man whom  we  must  follow  in  practice,  but  we  must  fill 
our  hearts  with  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  Russian. 


158  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

And  what  is  this  feeling  of  the  brotherhood  of  man 
but  the  recognition  of  the  dignity  of  human  natm-e  ?  No 
matter  how  low,  how  degraded,  how  brutish  may  be  the 
man  or  woman,  we  need  all  the  more  to  recognize  in  them 
the  immortal  soul.  The  less  they  know  and  feel  their 
divine  origin,  the  more  must  we  be  penetrated  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  it. 

The   Economic   and   Moral   Effects    of   Public 
Outdoor   Relief  ^ 

I  have  not  been  able  to  assent  to  the  report  of  the  Chair- 
man of  the  Committee  on  Indoor  and  Outdoor  Relief,  only 
because,  as  it  seems  to  me,  he  does  not  draw  the  distinc- 
tion which  is  necessary  between  public  and  private  reUef. 

I  admit,  of  course,  that  there  are  persons  who  need  relief, 
that  is,  help,  in  their  own  homes,  and  that  both  Pittas 
argument  and  Mr.  Sanborn's  argument  apply  to  such : 
*^  Great  care  should  be  taken,  in  relieving  their  distresses, 
not  to  throw  them  into  the  great  class  of  vagrant  and 
homeless  poor.''  Such  people  however,  are,  to  my  mind, 
not  proper  subjects  for  public  relief  at  all;  for  what  is 
pubUc  relief,  and  upon  what  grounds  is  it  to  be  justified  ? 
Public  relief  is  money  paid  by  the  bulk  of  the  community 
(every  community  is  of  course  composed  mainly  of  those 
who  are  working  hard  to  obtain  a  livelihood)  to  certain 
members  of  the  community,  not,  however,  paid  volun- 
tarily or  spontaneously  by  those  interested  in  the  individ- 

1  Reprinted  from  the  17th  Annual  Report  of  the  National  Con- 
ference of  Charities  and  Correction,  held  at  Baltimore,  May  14-21, 
1890. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      159 

uals  receiving  it,  but  paid  by  public  officers  from  money 
raised  by  taxation.  The  only  justification  for  the  expendi- 
ture of  pubUc  money,  money  raised  by  taxation,  is  that 
it  is  necessary  for  the  pubUc  good.  That  certain  persons 
need  certain  things  is  no  reason  for  supplying  them  with 
those  things  from  the  pubhc  funds.  Before  this  can  be 
rightly  done,  it  is  necessary  to  prove  that  it  is  good  for 
the  conununity  at  large  that  it  should  be  done. 

It  is  always  necessary,  also,  in  considering  the  expendi- 
ture of  public  funds,  to  give  up  the  vague  notion  that  these 
funds  come  from  an  indefinitely  large  central  source  of 
supply,  which  can  be  drawn  upon  constantly  without  affect- 
ing any  one.  There  is  no  such  central  source  of  supply. 
Every  dollar  raised  by  taxation  comes  out  of  the  pocket  of 
some  individual,  usually  a  poor  individual,  and  makes  him 
so  much  the  poorer,  and  therefore  the  question  is  between 
the  man  who  earned  the  dollar  by  hard  work,  and  needs  it 
to  buy  himself  and  his  family  a  day's  food,  and  the  man 
who,  however  worthy  and  suffering,  did  not  earn  it,  but 
wants  it  to  be  given  to  him  to  buy  himself  and  his  family 
a  day's  food.  If  the  man  who  earned  it  wishes  to  divide  it 
with  the  other  man,  it  is  usually  a  desirable  thing  that  he 
should  do  so,  and  at  any  rate  it  is  more  or  less  his  own 
business ;  but  that  the  law,  by  the  hand  of  a  public  officer, 
should  take  it  from  him  and  hand  it  over  to  the  other  man, 
seems  to  be  an  act  of  gross  tjo-anny  and  injustice,  which,  if 
carried  far  enough  and  repeated  often  enough,  leads  to  a 
condition  of  things  where  there  is  not  sufficient  produced 
for  everybody,  and  therefore  all  suffer,  the  men  who  earn 
the  dollars  as  well  as  those  who  do  not  earn  them. 


160  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

It  is  good  for  the  community  that  no  one  should  be 
allowed  to  starve ;  therefore,  it  is  a  legitimate  thing  that 
the  public  money  should  be  used  to  prevent  such  a  possi- 
biUty,  and  this  justifies  the  giving  of  public  reUef  in  ex- 
treme cases  of  distress,  when  starvation  is  imminent. 
Where,  however,  shall  be  found  the  proof  that  starvation 
is  imminent  ?  Only  by  putting  such  conditions  upon  the 
giving  of  pubhc  rehef  that,  presumably,  persons  not  in 
danger  of  starvation  will  not  consent  to  receive  it.  The 
less  that  is  given,  the  better  for  every  one,  the  giver  and 
the  receiver ;  and,  therefore,  the  conditions  must  be  hard, 
although  never  degrading.  On  the  contrary,  they  must 
be  elevating,  and  this  is  by  no  means  incompatible  with 
severity. 

To  those  who  object  that,  because  the  community  re- 
lieves a  person,  that  person  should  not  therefore  be  reduced 
to  pauperism  by  being  placed  in  an  institution,  the  only 
answer  is  that  the  receiving  of  relief  from  the  community 
constitutes  pauperism,  and  the  refuge  from  pauperism  is 
either  in  self-support  or  else  in  the  giving  of  help  from 
private  sources.  Because  certain  persons  think  that  cer- 
tain other  persons  need  help  is  no  doubt  the  best  reason 
why  they  should  help  them,  but  not  a  good  reason  why 
they  should  require  the  community  to  help  them. 

There  are  undoubtedly  many,  many  persons  who  do 
need  help,  and  many,  many  more  who  would  be  glad  to 
get  it,  and  who  think  they  need  it ;  and  many,  many  more 
who  do  not  think  they  need  it,  but  who  still  would  take 
it  if  offered  to  them.  Where  is  the  line  to  be  drawn? 
If  there  were  a  store  of  pubUc  property  created  by  no 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      161 

individuals,  the  result  of  no  personal  exertion  or  labor,  — 
for  instance,  were  the  United  States  still  possessed  of  all 
the  property,  lands,  mines,  etc.,  which  have  in  the  past 
belonged  to  the  people,  and  were  all  these  now  rented, 
and  the  surplus  income  not  required  for  the  expenses  of 
government  divided  per  capita  among  the  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  is  there  any  individual,  rich  or  poor, 
who  would  refuse  to  receive  his  share  ?  And,  if  not,  why 
not  ?  Simply,  because  there  would  be  no  unpleasant  con- 
ditions attached  to  receiving  it.  There  would  be  no 
stigma  connected  with  it,  because  every  one  would  rec- 
ognize that  he  had  a  right  to  receive  it,  that  it  was  public 
property,  and  that  he  was  in  exactly  the  same  position  as 
e\nery  other  citizen  of  the  United  States.  Then,  further, 
what  would  be  the  effect  of  this  payment  upon  the  char- 
acter and  upon  the  conduct  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States?  Excuse  the  extravagance  of  the  supposition, 
and  say,  for  the  sake  of  illustration,  that  the  sum  paid  to 
each  man  and  woman  over  twenty-one  years  of  age  was 
$500  a  year.  Would  there  not  be  quite  a  large  proportion 
of  the  community  who  now  earn  $500  a  year  who  would, 
upon  being  assured  of  this  income,  cease  to  work  for  a 
living?  Some  of  these,  so  ceasing,  would  devote  them- 
selves to  higher  pursuits  than  earning  a  living,  to  study, 
to  art,  to  philanthropy.  Some,  on  the  contrary,  would 
spend  their  substance  in  riotous  living,  and  would  become 
much  less  worthy,  much  less  decent,  than  ever  before  in 
their  lives.  But  all  who  ceased  to  work  for  a  living  would, 
imdoubtedly,  very  soon  become  less  fitted  to  earn  a  living, 
would  become  less  energetic,  less  skilled  in  a  money-mak- 


162  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ing  direction,  less  able  to  succeed.  And  what  would  be  the 
effect  on  the  children?  Would  they,  with  the  assurance 
of  $500  yearly  income  upon  reaching  their  majority, 
probably  be  as  energetic,  as  self-reliant,  as  fitted  to  earn  a 
living,  as  they  would  have  been  without  this  assurance? 
Does  experience  prove  that  the  children  of  persons  who 
do  not  have  to  exert  themselves  have  the  same  indepen- 
dence and  the  same  power  to  support  themselves  as  the 
children  of  those  differently  situated? 

We  have  been  speaking  of  an  income  paid  to  every 
member  of  the  community,  regardless  of  his  own  exertions 
or  character,  and  we  have  assumed  that  this  income  came 
from  a  source  of  wealth,  the  rent  of  public  property,  not 
created  by  individuals;  but  could  there  be  any  such 
source  of  wealth?  The  rents  of  public  property  would 
have  to  be  derived  from  the  energy  and  industry  of  the 
men  who  used  it ;  and  were  these  and  those  who  followed 
them  to  content  themselves  with  the  $500  coming  to  each 
of  them  from  the  public  treasury,  and  therefore  cease  to 
produce,  very  soon  the  lands  and  the  mines  themselves 
would  lose  value,  the  rents  would  fall  because  of  the  want 
of  industry  of  the  people,  and  the  community  would  lose 
a  part,  at  least,  of  its  regular  income,  and  be  driven  to 
earn  its  own  hving  again  by  the  sweat  of  the  brow ;  but 
it  would  have  lost  many  of  the  qualities  upon  which 
success  in  earning  a  living  depends.  The  people  would 
earn  a  worse  living  than  they  used  to,  and  would  be  dis- 
tinctly less  well  off  than  before  the  distribution  of  the 
public  property  began,  until  they  recovered  their  energy 
and  industry.     Now,  this  is,  as  I  have  said,  simply  an 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      163 

extravagant  supposition;  but,  considering  what  human 
nature  now  is,  were  these  conditions  possible,  are  not  such 
the  results  which  must  follow  the  general  acquisition  of  an 
income  which  would  accrue  to  each  citizen  of  the  United 
States  without  any  exertion  on  his  part  ?  At  any  rate,  ex- 
perience shows  that  this  is  exactly  the  effect  on  those  who 
receive  pubUc  reUef,  except  that  to  the  unfortunate  di- 
minishing of  the  energy  and  earning  capacity  of  the  re- 
cipients is  also  added  a  moral  degradation,  because  there 
is  a  stigma  attached  to  public  rehef,  arising  from  the  fact 
that  the  money  received  is  actually  the  property  of  in- 
dividuals taken  from  them  against  their  will  and  not  be- 
longing to  the  public ;  and  it  is  necessary  to  overcome 
a  sense  of  shame  before  any  one  is  content  to  become  a 
pauper,  and  the  loss  of  this  sense  of  shame  in  itself  con- 
stitutes a  distinct  moral  degradation,  and  leads  to  still 
further  deterioration  of  character. 

If  the  advocates  of  public  reUef  contend  that  there 
should  be  no  stigma  attached  to  its  receipt,  the  answer  is 
that,  in  that  case,  the  tendency  would  be  toward  the  con- 
dition where  the  whole  people  would  be  ready  to  accept 
an  income  from  so-called  pubhc  funds,  and  that  the  re- 
sulting loss  of  energy  and  industry  would  be  sufficient  to 
plunge  any  nation  into  a  greater  poverty  than  any  now 
suffers.  Pubhc  relief  does  not  have  an  enervating  effect 
upon  the  character  of  those  who  receive  it  because  they 
are  different  from  other  human  beings,  but  because  they 
are  human  beings,  and  are  actuated  by  exactly  the  same 
motives  as  the  rest  of  the  race.  It  is  not  because  paupers 
are  primarily  more  lazy  than  other  people  that  they  will 


164   ^  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

not  work  for  a  living  if  they  can  be  supported  without 
working.  If  you  will  consider,  you  will  find  that  you  do 
not  know  any  one,  or,  if  you  do,  you  regard  him  or  her  as 
a  most  extraordinary  individual,  who  works  for  a  living 
when  it  is  not  necessary,  when  the  living  is  supplied  from 
some  source  without  any  conditions  which  are  dishonor- 
able or  irksome.  The  whole  difference  between  a  pauper 
and  any  of  the  rest  of  us  who  do  not  earn  our  own  living 
is  that  he  wants  and  gets  very  httle,  while  we  want  and 
get  a  great  deal,  and  that  our  views  of  what  are  honorable 
and  dishonorable  conditions  differ  materially  from  his. 

Of  course,  to  be  logical,  I  ought  to  go  on  to  the  position 
which  Dr.  Chalmers  took,  that  it  would  be  better  for  the 
community  that  there  should  be  no  public  relief,  indoor 
or  outdoor,  none  in  the  poorhouse  and  none  outside  the 
poorhouse;  but  I  am  not  prepared  to  go  quite  so  far  as 
this,  for  I  do  think  that,  besides  energy  and  the  power  of 
work,  there  are  other  human  faculties  which  need  develop- 
ing, and  that  the  community  should  acknowledge  an  obliga- 
tion to  succor,  and  even  to  support,  those  of  its  members 
who  are  absolutely  unable  to  fight  the  battle  of  life,  and 
that  there  should  be  a  sure  refuge  from  starvation.  So  far 
as  this  refuge  is  furnished  from  the  funds  raised  by  taxation, 
however,  I  am  persuaded,  as  I  have  said,  that  the  only 
safe  way  to  provide  it,  is  under  such  stringent  conditions 
that  no  one  shall  be  tempted  to  accept  it  except  in  an  ex- 
tremity, and  under  such  conditions,  also,  as  will  as  soon 
as  possible  make  the  recipient  of  help  able  to  support 
himself  again  and  do  his  part  in  supporting  others.  I 
mean  that  public  relief  should  be  indoor  relief,  inside  the 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      165 

doors  of  an  institution,  where  cure  and  education  should 
be  the  primary  objects  aimed  at,  —  cure  of  disease,  moral, 
mental  and  physical,  and  education  in  self-control  and  self- 
dependence.  The  community  may  well  say  to  any  of 
its  members:  ''If  you  cannot  support  yourself  by  your 
own  work,  it  is  a  pity.  We  will  support  you  by  our  work ; 
but  we  will  not  make  it  so  pleasant  for  you  that  you  will 
desire  to  continue  the  condition,  and  we  will  train  your 
mind  and  body  so  that  you  will  be  able  soon  to  undertake 
the  care  of  yourself." 

You  see  my  argument  is  that  the  work  of  the  mass  of 
every  community  is  an  absolute  necessity,  in  order  to  pro- 
vide for  it  the  means  of  hving ;  that  no  human  being  will 
work  to  provide  the  means  of  living  for  himself  if  he  can 
get  a  living  in  any  other  manner  agreeable  to  himself  (you 
will  observe  that  I  do  not  say  men  will  not  work,  but  that 
they  will  not  work  for  a  living) ;  and  that  the  community 
cannot  afford  to  tempt  its  members  who  are  able  to  work 
for  a  Uving  to  give  up  working  for  a  living  by  offering  to 
provide  a  living  otherwise ;  and  that  public  relief  must  be 
confined  to  those  who  cannot  work  for  a  living,  and  the 
only  way  to  test  whether  they  can  or  cannot  is  to  make 
the  living  provided  by  the  public  always  less  agreeable 
than  the  Uving  provided  by  the  individual  for  himself,  and 
the  way  to  do  this  is  to  provide  it  under  strict  rules  inside 
an  institution. 

The  practice  of  any  community  in  this  particular  is  a 
matter  of  great  importance,  for  there  can  be  no  question 
that  there  is  an  inverse  ratio  between  the  welfare  of  the 
mass  of  the  people  and  the  distribution  of  relief.     What 


166  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

some  one  has  called  'Hhe  fatal  ease  of  living  without  work 
and  the  terrible  difficulty  of  living  by  work'^  are  closely 
interrelated  as  cause  and  effect;  and,  if  you  will  permit 
me,  I  will  try  to  show  by  a  short  allegory  what  this  re- 
lation is. 

Once  upon  a  time  there  lived  in  a  valley,  called  the  Val- 
ley of  Industry,  a  people  who  were  happy  and  industri- 
ous. All  the  goods  of  this  life  were  supplied  to  them  by 
exhaustless  subterranean  springs  of  water,  which  they 
pumped  up  into  a  great  reservoir  on  the  top  of  a  neigh- 
boring hill,  the  Hill  of  Prosperity,  from  which  it  flowed 
down,  each  man  receiving  what  he  himself  pumped  up, 
by  a  small  pipe  which  led  into  his  own  house,  a  moderate 
amount  of  pumping  on  the  part  of  every  one  keeping  the 
reservoir  well  filled. 

Finally,  a  few  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Valley,  more 
keen  than  the  rest,  reflected  that  it  was  unnecessary  to 
weary  themselves  with  pumping,  so  long  as  every  one  else 
kept  at  work.  The  Hill  of  Prosperity  looked  very  at- 
tractive; and  they  therefore  mounted  to  a  convenient 
point,  and  put  a  large  pipe  into  the  reservoir,  through 
which  they  drew  off  copious  supplies  of  water  without 
further  trouble.  The  number  of  those  who  gave  up  pump- 
ing and  withdrew  to  the  Hill  was  at  first  so  small  that  the 
loss  did  not  add  very  much  to  the  work  of  the  mass  of  the 
people  who  still  kept  to  their  pumping,  and  it  did  not 
occur  to  them  to  complain ;  but  those  who  could,  followed 
the  others  up  the  Hill  until  it  was  all  occupied,  and  by  this 
time,  although  those  who  remained  in  the  Valley  did  find 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      167 

their  pumping  a  good  deal  harder  than  it  was  when  all 
who  used  the  water  joined  in  the  work,  yet  every  one  had 
become  so  accustomed  to  some  people  using  the  reservoir 
water  without  doing  any  pumping  that  it  had  come  to  be 
considered  all  right,  and  still  there  were  no  complaints. 
Meanwhile,  the  people  on  the  Hill  of  Prosperity  having 
nothing  to  do  but  enjoy  the  prospect,  some  of  them  began 
to  explore  the  neighboring  country,  and  soon  discovered 
another  valley  at  the  foot  of  the  Hill,  running  parallel  with 
the  Valley  of  Industry,  and  called  the  Valley  of  Idleness, 
and  in  it  were  a  few  people  who  had  wandered  from  the 
former  Valley  (for  the  two  were  connected  at  the  farther 
end),  and  who  were  living  in  an  abject  misery,  with  no 
water,  and  apparently  no  means  of  getting  any,  so  long 
as  they  stayed  where  they  were.  The  people  from  the 
Hill  of  Prosperity  were  very  much  shocked  at  the  suffering 
they  found.  ^'What  a  shame!"  they  cried.  ''The  poor 
things  have  no  water !  We  have  plenty  and  to  spare, 
so  let  us  lead  a  pipe  from  the  reservoir  down  into  their 
Valley."  No  sooner  said  than  done ;  the  pipe  was  carried 
into  the  Valley  of  Idleness,  and  the  people  were  made  more 
comfortable.  But  as  soon  as  the  news  was  brought  into 
the  Valley  of  Industry,  some  of  the  pumpers  who  were 
tired  or  weak,  and  some  who  were  only  lazy,  left  their 
pumping,  and  hastened  into  the  neighboring  Valley,  to 
enjoy  the  free  water ;  but  the  pipe  was  not  very  large, 
and  soon  there  was  want  and  suffering  again,  and  the 
people  from  Prosperity  Hill  were  much  disturbed,  and 
decided  to  lay  down  another  small  pipe,  which  they  did. 
But  the  result  was  the  same,  for  the  new  supply  of  water 


168  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

attracted  more  people  from  the  Valley  of  Industry. 
And  so  it  went  on,  new  pipe,  more  people,  new  pipe,  more 
people,  until  the  inhabitants  of  Prosperity  Hill  were  full 
of  distress  about  it,  and  exclaimed,  '^It  seems  a  hopeless 
task  to  try  to  make  these  people  happy  and  comfortable  V^ 
And  they  would  have  given  up  in  despair,  but  a  new  idea 
occurred  to  them;  and  they  said,  ''They  do  not  seem  to 
know  how  to  take  very  good  care  of  their  children,  and  we 
will  therefore  take  their  children  from  them,  and  teach 
them  to  be  comfortable  and  happy/'  So  they  built  large, 
fine  houses  for  the  children,  and  they  carried  water  in 
large  pipes  into  the  houses.  And  some  of  them  said,  ''Let 
us  put  faucets,  so  as  to  teach  them  to  turn  on  the  water 
when  they  need  it,"  But  others  said:  "Oh,  no!  How 
troublesome  it  is  to  have  to  turn  a  faucet  when  you  need 
water  !  Let  them  have  it  as  we  do,  free."  And  sometimes 
one  or  other  would  suggest  that,  after  all,  perhaps  it  was 
not  quite  right  to  waste  so  much  of  the  water  from  the 
reservoir,  and  that  the  large  pipe  itself,  which  supplied 
the  Hill  of  Prosperity,  ought  to  have  some  means  of  check- 
ing the  flow;  but  the  answer  was,  "It  is  necessary  and 
right  that  the  water  should  be  wasted ;  for  otherwise  the 
people  in  the  Valley  of  Industry  would  have  nothing  to 
do,  and  they  would  starve."  Usually,  however,  the  Pros- 
perity Hill  people  were  too  much  engaged  in  taking  care 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Valley  of  Idleness  to  give  much 
thought  to  those  of  the  Valley  of  Industry;  and  their 
anxiety  was  quite  justified,  for  they  had  to  keep  up  a  per- 
petual watchfulness,  the  people  increasing  so  fast  that  it 
was  necessary  constantly  to  lay  more  pipe  to  keep  them 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      169 

from  the  most  abject  suffering,  and  even  this  device  never 
succeeded  for  very  long,  as  I  have  said. 

In  fact,  no  one  thought  much  about  the  Valley  of 
Industry,  or  its  people.  Those  in  the  Valley  of  Idleness 
only  thought  of  them  long  enough  to  reflect  how  silly 
they  were  to  keep  on  pumping  all  the  time  and  making 
their  backs  and  arms  ache,  when  they  might  have  water 
without  any  exertion,  by  simply  moving  into  their  Valley. 
The  children  bom  in  the  Valley  of  Idleness  did  not  even 
know  there  was  a  Valley  of  Industry,  or  any  pumps,  or 
any  pumpers,  or  any  reservoir;  they  thought  the  water 
grew  in  pipes,  and  ran  out  because  it  was  its  nature  to. 
As  for  the  people  on  the  Hill  of  Prosperity,  they  were,  as 
we  have  seen,  rather  confused  in  their  views  in  this  par- 
ticular ;  and,  besides  thinking  that  their  waste  of  the  water 
from  the  reservoir  was  what  kept  the  people  in  the  Valley 
of  Industry  from  starving,  they  used  also  to  say  some- 
times :  ''How  good  it  is  for  those  people  to  have  such  nice, 
steady  work  to  do !  How  strong  it  makes  their  backs  and 
arms  !  How  it  hardens  their  muscles  !  What  a  nice,  in- 
dependent set  of  people  they  are !  And  what  a  splendid 
quantity  of  pure,  life-giving  water  they  get  out  of  our 
reservoir !" 

Meanwhile,  you  can  imagine,  though  they  could  not, 
that  it  was  rather  hard  on  the  men  in  the  Valley  of 
Industry,  not  only  to  have  the  water  they  pumped  up 
drawn  off  at  the  top  to  supply  two  other  communities, 
but  also  to  have  their  own  ranks  thinned  and  their  work 
increased  by  the  loss  of  those  who  were  tempted  into  the 
Valley  of  Idleness,  to  hve  on  what  the  Prosperity  Hill 


170  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

people  and  the  Valley  of  Idleness  people  liked  to 
call  euphemistically  free  water,  because  they  got  it 
free,  though  actually  it  was  not  free  at  all;  for  the 
Valley  of  Industry  people  paid  for  it  with  their  blood 
and  muscle. 

I  might  go  on  to  tell  you  how  the  situation  was  still 
fiu-ther  complicated  and  made  harder  for  them,  and  indeed 
for  almost  every  one,  when  a  few  of  them  obtained  con- 
trol of  the  inexhaustible  subterranean  springs ;  but  here, 
I  think,  the  allegory  may  end  for  the  purposes  of  this  Con- 
ference, and  it  seems  to  me  to  teach  a  lesson  which  we 
may  well  heed. 

I  have  so  far  considered  only  the  effect  of  relief  upon  the 
character  of  the  recipient,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
public  welfare  and  the  injury  done  to  the  community,  as 
a  whole,  by  the  lowering  of  the  producing  power,  the  energy 
and  industry  of  its  members.  This  view  is  the  most  im- 
portant ;  but  because  of  its  very  importance,  because  it 
deals  with  the  welfare  of  the  whole  community,  it  is  not 
apt  to  appeal  so  strongly  to  our  sympathies  as  considera- 
tions which  affect  individuals,  and  I  shall  therefore  turn 
now  to  the  effect  on  individual  men  and  women  of  pre- 
senting to  them  the  temptations  of  relief.  You  will  ob- 
serve that  I  no  longer  say  public  relief ;  for  I  do  not  wish 
here  to  discriminate  between  public  and  private  relief, 
the  evil  effects  upon  the  individual  man  or  woman  receiv- 
ing any  relief,  as  distinguished  from  the  help  of  friends, 
being  about  equal.  We  have  seen  that  it  is  not  in  human 
nature  to  refuse  any  gift  which  comes  hampered  by  no 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      171 

disagreeable  or  dishonorable  conditions;  we  have  seen 
also  that  energy  and  the  power  of  self-support  must  be 
diminished,  as  are  all  other  faculties,  by  disuse;  and, 
these  two  statements  being  accepted  as  facts,  it  follows 
that  no  greater  injury  can  be  done  to  a  human  being 
whose  whole  success  and  happiness  in  hfe  consist  in 
his  power  of  exerting  himself  and  supporting  himself, 
than  to  tempt  him  by  the  offer  of  gifts,  which  will  not 
support  him,  but  which  will  lead  him  to  suppose  that 
he  need  not  support  himself,  and  therefore  will  induce 
him  to  give  up  the  use  of  his  self-supporting  faculties. 
Can  anything  more  certain  be  devised  for  destroying 
manhood  ? 

As  it  is  now  given,  relief  seems  to  have  all  the  disad- 
vantages it  possibly  can  have,  and  none  of  the  advantages. 
It  serves  to  weaken  the  character,  to  excite  the  gambling 
spirit,  the  recklessness  and  extravagance  which  come  of 
chance  gains ;  but  it  does  not  give  the  quiet  and  peace, 
the  power  to  live  for  worthier  objects  than  mere  physical 
support,  which  an  assured  income  supplies,  while  it  also 
destroys  all  the  incentive  to  activity,  energy  and  in- 
dustry which  are  usually  suppHed  by  the  struggle  to 
make  a  living. 

I  am  becoming  more  and  more  strongly  convinced  that 
the  giving  of  relief  in  the  manner  which  is  now  the  custom 
is  a  cruel  injury  to  those  who  receive  it,  both  because  it 
does  produce  such  ruin  of  all  the  faculties  which  constitute 
what  we  call  character,  and  also  because  it  offers  what  to 
any  but  a  heroic  nature  must  be  an  overwhelming  tempta- 
tion. 


172  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

When  we  consider  the  hardships,  the  struggles,  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  mass  of  those  who  are  commonly  called  the 
working  people,  of  those  who  earn  from  day  to  day  the 
support  of  themselves  and  their  families,  when  we  remem- 
ber how  much  hard  work  it  takes  to  earn  one  dollar,  and 
often  how  hard  it  is  even  to  get  the  hard  work  to  do,  and 
then  think  of  the  reckless  way  in  which  a  dollar  is  given 
here,  there  and  everywhere,  often  simply  for  the  asking, 
can  we  wonder  that  many  succumb  to  the  temptation  ta 
ask  ?  The  contempt  for  charity  (I  hate  to  so  debase  the 
beautiful  word,  but  that  is  the  use  to  which  it  has  come) 
which  the  mass  of  honest  and  hardworking  people  most 
fortunately  feel  is  their  only  shield  and  defence  against  the 
temptation  so  constantly  held  out  to  them ;  but  the  tempta- 
tion is  potent  enough  to  decoy  its  thousands  within  the 
baleful  influence  of  relief-getting,  and,  once  under  the 
spell,  the  salvation  of  the  victim  seems  impossible,  for 
the  rewards  are  too  great  on  that  side  and  the  struggle  too 
severe  on  this.  Imagine  a  poor,  sickly  woman,  with  little 
children  to  support.  By  hard  work,  which  makes  her  back 
and  head  ache  to  the  limit  of  endurance,  she  may  earn  a 
dollar  a  day,  and  keep  her  children  from  starvation.  By 
asking  for  relief,  by  begging  from  door  to  door,  she  can 
make  more  in  one  day  than  a  week^s  work  will  bring. 
Except  for  her  pride,  except  for  her  self-respect,  what  can 
weigh  with  her  in  favor  of  the  badly  paid  work  as  against 
the  well-paid  begging  ?  Has  any  human  being  the  right, 
instead  of  going  to  her  assistance  in  her  extremity,  so  to 
tempt  her  to  degradation  ?  Or  imagine  the  man  who  by 
a  month's  work  can  earn  fifty  or  sixty  dollars.    He  has  a 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      173 

sick  wife.  He  has  three  or  four  Uttle  children.  He  knows 
there  is  plenty  of  money  in  the  hands  of  benevolent  persons. 
He  writes  a  letter,  setting  forth  his  straits.  He  receives 
$25  in  return.  Can  that  man  ever  again  be  free  from  the 
temptation  to  gain  another  $25  by  the  writing  of  another 
letter,  instead  of  spending  twelve  weary  days  in  getting 
it  ?  You  see,  these  people  are  not  in  comfortable  circum- 
stances. They  cannot  have  what  they  want,  often  not 
what  they  need,  even  by  making  all  the  exertion  of  which 
they  are  capable.  Then,  if  to  them  comes  the  tempta- 
tion to  get  it  all  without  any  exertion,  is  it  not,  as  I 
have  said,  heroic,  if  they  resist,  and  is  it  possible  that 
any  one  with  a  heart  and  a  conscience  and  an  imagina- 
tion can  be  willing  to  stand  as  the  tempter  where  the 
temptation  is  so  dire  and  the  results  of  giving  way  mean 
moral  ruin  ? 

It  seems  unnecessary  to  say  that,  if  it  were  a  question  of 
giving  an  income  sufficient  to  live  decently  upon  to  certain 
persons  for  life,  the  moral  effect  would  not  be  so  bad, 
would  often  not  be  bad  at  all ;  but  the  trouble  here  is  as 
to  the  choice  of  the  favored  persons  and  the  danger  of  in- 
definitely enlarging  the  number  of  pensioners  until  the 
resources  for  their  support  and  for  the  support  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  are  brought  so  low  as  to  cause  extended 
and  general  suffering,  and  therefore,  the  only  way  for  the 
public  to  supply  any  such  comfortable  Hving  is  to  supply 
it  under  conditions  which  so  far  detract  from  or  at  least 
counterbalance  its  comfort  as  to  make  the  number  of  per- 
sons ready  to  accept  it  self-limited.  As  to  what  may  and 
ought  to  be  done  in  this  direction  by  those  persons  who, 


174  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

having  a  large  share  of  the  goods  of  this  world,  are 
called  upon  to  help  those  who  have  less,  I  can  only- 
say  that  I  think  there  are  many  poor,  feeble,  suffer- 
ing women  now  struggling  for  their  daily  bread,  whom 
it  would  be  a  very  desirable  thing  to  supply  with  an 
income  sufficient  to  keep  them  in  comfort  to  the  end 
of  their  lives,  and  that  the  injury  to  their  characters 
would  be  no  more  and  no  other  than  the  injury  of 
resting  in  comfort  to  the  characters  of  the  many  strong 
and  happy  women  who  now  live  on  incomes  which  they 
do  not  earn. 

Finally,  the  real  condemnation  of  relief-giving  is  that 
it  is  material,  that  it  seeks  material  ends  by  material 
means,  and  therefore  must  fail,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
ever  to  attain  its  own  ends.  For  man  is  a  spiritual 
being,  and,  if  he  is  to  be  helped,  it  must  be  by  spiritual 
means.  As  Mazzini  has  said:  "The  human  soul,  not 
the  body,  should  be  the  starting-point  of  all  our  labors, 
since  the  body  without  the  soul  is  only  a  carcass ;  while 
the  soul,  wherever  it  is  found  free  and  whole,  is  sure  to 
mould  for  itself  such  a  body  as  its  wants  and  vocation 
require. '' 

Those  who  claim  that  relief  must  be  given,  even  though 
it  does  destroy  the  character,  because  without  it  they  fear 
that  there  may  be  physical  suffering,  besides  forgetting 
the  fact  that  it  makes  more  suffering  than  it  cures,  forget 
also  the  awful  question : 

"What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world 
and  lose  his  own  soul  ?  Or  what  shall  a  man  give  in  ex- 
change for  his  soul?" 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      175 

Poverty  and  its  Relief  :    the  Methods  Possible  in 
THE  City  of  New  York^ 

Wherever  any  body  of  Americans  interested  in  the 
question  of  poverty  and  its  reUef  meet  together  this  spring, 
the  first  thing  they  should  do  is  to  rejoice.  During  the 
winter  of  1893-1894  we  were  forced  by  the  emergency  to 
do  many  things  which  seemed  to  us  dangerous,  and  we 
dreaded  to  meet  in  the  winter  of  1894-1895  the  evil  con- 
sequences of  our  actions ;  but  from  all  the  cities  comes  the 
same  report,  —  the  evil  consequences  have  not  ensued. 
This  means  that  we  did  the  good  we  meant  to  do  and  did 
not  do  the  harm  we  feared  we  were  doing.  It  means  that 
our  earnest  desire  not  to  hurt  the  souls  of  those  in  need, 
while  we  helped  their  bodies,  was  so  strong  and  so  genuine 
that  our  influence  upon  them  was  good ;  and  it  may  well 
give  us  renewed  faith  both  in  human  nature  and  in  the 
spirit  in  which  we  have  tried  to  do  our  work.  I  believe 
the  secret  was  that  we  did  care  more  for  the  souls  and 
characters  of  the  people  we  tried  to  help  than  for  their 
bodies,  and  that  we  did  therefore  treat  each  one  as  an 
individual  person ;  and,  even  though  we  had  to  deal  with 
hundreds,  we  never  lumped  them  and  treated  them  whole- 
sale as  a  class. 

It  has  been  most  remarkable  that  the  people,  hard 
pressed  as  they  have  been  again  this  winter,  have  not  suc- 
cumbed to  the  temptation  to  turn  for  help  where  they  got 
it  so  freely  last  year.  The  Secretary  of  the  University 
Settlement  in  New  York,  who  himself  gave  out  hundreds 

*  In  "Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction  "  held  in  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  May  24-30,  1895. 


176  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  relief-work  tickets  in  1893  and  1894,  and  who  watched 
aaieixiWy  the  special  relief-work  given  from  the  Settlement 
to  the  striking  cloak-makers  this  winter,  said  he  found 
only  six  of  last  year's  applicants  among  the  five  hundred 
who  came  this  year.  At  the  Charity  Organization  Society 
District  Offices,  where  relief-work  tickets  were  also  dis- 
tributed in  1893  and  1894,  there  has  been  this  year  the 
same  remarkable  absence  of  apphcations  from  those  who 
were  helped  then. 

And,  as  I  have  said,  the  account  is  the  same  from  other 
sources.  To  take  only  three  of  the  largest  societies  in 
New  York : 

The  number  of  ''cases  treated^'  by  the  United  Hebrew 
Charities  during  the  first  three  months  of  the  years  1894 
and  1895  was  as  follows: 

1894  1895 

January        3,625  4,447 

February 4,175  3,449 

March 4,592  2,997 

12,392  10,893 

The  number  of  applicants  to  the  Association  for  Im- 
proving the  Condition  of  the  Poor  during  the  same  period 

^^^*                              1894  1895 

January   4,797  3,883 

February 5,560  3,539 

March 5,021  2,920 

15,378  10,342 

and  the  number  of  applicants  to  the  Charity  Organization 
Society:  i894  1895 

January        5,091  2,559 

February 4,651  2,317 

March 4,005  2,230 

13,747  7,106 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      177 

Thus,  as  I  have  said,  we  do  well  to  rejoice ;  for  a  great 
danger  has  been  escaped  and  a  great  lesson  has  been 
learned. 

!  But  let  me  make  now  a  practical  application  of  the  lesson 
learned,  and  try  to  sketch  the  rough  outlines  of  a  plan  by 
which,  in  ordinary  times,  people  in  distress  may  be  helped 
physically  without  being  hurt  morally. 

To  turn  to  the  special  field  assigned  me.  New  York  City, 
the  problem  of  relief  in  New  York  is  the  same  as  in  other 
large  cities,  —  how  to  provide  such  help  as  is  needed  for 
the  people  who  belong  in  the  city  without  attracting  to 
it  persons  from  outside,  and  how  to  help  effectively  such 
of  these  last  as  do  come. 

The  problem  would  be  simple  enough  if  there  were  only 
a  given  number  of  people  in  the  city  suffering  from  poverty 
and  want,  which  number  could  not  be  increased,  and  could 
be  decreased  by  every  individual  Ufted  out  of  misery; 
but  the  truth  is  the  exact  opposite  to  this.  While  the 
conditions  continue  which  bring  people  to  distress,  while 
the  great  city  attracts  from  all  quarters  and  corrupts  those 
who  come,  the  suffering  and  misery  will  continue,  no  mat- 
ter how  many  are  relieved. 

It  is  not  only  or  chiefly  selfishness  which  should  lead 
every  large  city  to  dread  an  influx  of  the  homeless  and 
unemployed;  for,  in  the  nature  of  things,  little  can  be 
done  for  them  which  will  not  finally  be  more  of  an  injury 
than  a  benefit  both  to  them  and  to  others.  The  natural 
attraction  of  the  city  is  felt  not  only  by  the  most  intelli- 
gent and  energetic  of  country  men  and  women,  who  rightly 
believe  that  their  chances  of  rising  are  infinitely  greater  in 


178  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  metropolis  than  at  home,  but  by  the  happy-go-lucky, 
who  hope  that  something  will  turn  up  every  time  they 
make  a  change,  and  by  the  purely  lazy  or  vicious. 

Every  charity,  notwithstanding  the  best  efforts  of 
those  who  conduct  it,  adds  to  this  attraction ;  and  the 
result  is  sad  beyond  expression. 

As  Edward  Denison  said  thirty  years  ago : 

''A  prominent  characteristic  of  our  social  economy,  and 
a  main  cause  of  its  unsatisfactory  condition,  is  the  igno- 
rant rush  of  population  from  the  villages  and  smaller 
towns  toward  the  great  industrial  centres.  ...  It  will  be 
objected  that,  if  the  people  flock  to  the  towns,  it  is  be- 
cause they  find  themselves  better  off  there  than  in  the 
country.  But  do  they?  My  complaint  is  that  the  rush 
is  an  ignorant  rush,  which  carries  its  dupes  over  the 
precipice  into  the  gulf  of  pauperism,  of  crime,  of  disease, 
of  starvation,  of  despair.  .  .  .'' 

The  problem  is  to  drain  a  poisonous  marsh  into  which 
run  streams  of  pure  water  to  be  polluted  in  its  depths. 
Shall  pumps  be  applied  to  suck  out  the  poisonous  stuff 
and  suck  in  still  larger  floods  of  fresh  water  to  absorb  the 
deadly  miasm,  and  so  create  an  unending  task  of  pumping, 
or  shall  the  streams  be  cut  off? 

Practically,  what  solution  of  the  problem  do  I  propose  ? 

That  the  chronically  homeless  and  unemployed  shall 
be  dealt  with  almost  entirely  by  a  system  of  public  relief, 
the  exception  being  made  only  in  favor  of  such  private 
relief  agencies  as  will  bind  themselves  to  take  sole  care, 
and  permanent  care,  of  such  individuals  as  they  undertake 
to  deal  with  at  all,  —  to  provide  home  and  work  and  educa- 
tion and  religious  teaching  for  them. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      179 

The  public  relief  I  advocate  would  consist  of  three 
stages  :  the  first,  a  decent  lodging  place,  where  cleanliness 
and  strict  order  and  discipline  should  be  enforced,  and 
where,  at  the  discretion  of  the  public  authorities,  men  or 
women  might  remain  from  one  to  seven  days,  while  ar- 
rangements for  their  permanent  disposal  could  be  made ; 
second,  a  farm  school,  where  a  training  lasting  from  six 
months  to  two  years  should  be  given  to  fit  its  inmates  for 
country  work  and  country  life ;  and,  third,  what  General 
Booth  has  called  ''an  asylum  for  moral  idiots,''  where  men 
and  women  who  have  proved  themselves  incorrigible  shall 
be  shut  away  from  harming  themselves  and  others.  As 
General  Booth  says,  ''It  is  a  crime  against  the  race  to 
allow  those  who  are  so  inveterately  depraved  the  freedom 
to  wander  abroad,  infect  their  fellows,  prey  upon  society 
and  multiply  their  kind." 

I  fear  that  to  many  my  scheme  of  public  relief  will  seem 
harsh  and  cruel;  but  I  believe  it  to  be  far  more  kind  than  any 
other,  both  to  the  unhappy  beings  themselves,  who  are  now 
by  mistaken  leniency  lured  into  a  life  which  surely  leads  to 
physical  and  moral  death,  and  to  the  community  at  large. 

Having  now  described  what  I  think  public  relief  should 
do  for  the  chronically  homeless  and  unemployed,  I 
must  take  up  the  question  of  how  private  charity  can  help 
others  in  distress,  —  really  help  them,  I  mean,  —  help 
their  characters  and  their  souls  as  well  as  their  bodies. 

Three  things  are  necessary : 

1.  Knowledge  of  the  facts. 

2.  Adequate  relief  for  the  body. 

3.  Moral  oversight  for  the  soul. 


180  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

In  New  York  City  it  seems  to  me  that  we  have  the  means 
of  supplying  all  three,  if  only  we  would  use  them. 

We  have  the  Charity  Organization  Society  to  supply 
the  knowledge  of  the  facts.  We  have  rich  relief  societies 
to  supply  the  adequate  relief  for  the  body.  We  have 
churches,  synagogues  and  devoted  private  individuals 
who  long  to  help,  to  supply  the  moral  oversight  of  the  soul. 
Besides  these  positive  means  of  effective  work,  we  are 
also  favorably  situated,  because  we  are  almost  entirely 
free  from  the  complications  of  public  outdoor  relief,  which 
is  reduced  to  a  minimum  in  New  York  City.  Without 
indulging  in  any  extravagant  fancy,  I  shall  try  to  draw  a 
picture  of  what  might  easily  be  done  with  our  available 
forces. 

The  Charity  Organization  Societj'-  is,  of  course,  one  of 
the  latest  societies  estabhshed,  but  it  was  the  natural  out- 
growth of  the  charitable  effort  of  the  city.  All  those  who 
were  seeking  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  poor,  and  to 
lift  them  morally  and  physically,  felt  that  they  must  no 
longer  work  independently  and  at  cross  purposes,  but  must 
join  themselves  together  in  some  representative  body, 
where  delegates  from  all  the  different  benevolent  societies 
should  meet  and  consult  and  keep  constantly  in  touch 
with  each  other.  For  this  reason  the  Association  for 
Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  the  German  Society, 
the  French  Benevolent  Society,  the  St.  Vincent  de  Paul 
Society,  the  Hebrew  Benevolent  Society,  and  many  others, 
upon  the  suggestion  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  united 
to  form  the  Charity  Organization  Society,  —  the  society 
to  organize  charity ;  and  representatives  from  all  became 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      181 

members  of  the  Council,  and  inaugurated  a  system  by 
which  not  only  the  societies  which  established  this  new 
society,  but  all  others  in  the  city,  and  all  churches  and  in- 
dividuals, could  get  reliable  knowledge  of  the  facts  about 
every  individual  whom  thej^  wanted  to  help  in  any  way, 
thus  furnishing  a  sure  foundation  upon  which  to  base  their 
plans  of  help.  If  thoroughly  carried  out,  this  would  have 
three  most  fortunate  effects.  It  would  prevent  all '' over- 
lapping,'^ since,  if  the  names  of  all  persons  applying  any- 
where for  relief  were  sent  in  to  the  registration  bureau  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society  immediatel}',  no  two 
societies  and  no  two  individuals  could  be  helping  the  same 
person  in  ignorance  of  each  other's  action ;  it  would  pre- 
vent deceit  on  the  part  of  those  needing  relief,  because  de- 
ceit would  be  immediately  discovered ;  and  it  would  effect 
a  decided  saving  of  money  by  the  relief  societies,  partly 
because  all  investigation  at  their  own  expense  would  be 
unnecessary,  since  the  work  is  done  without  charge  by 
the  Charity  Organization  Society,  and  also  because  they 
would  cease  to  give  relief  to  those  not  really  needing  it. 

Through  this  saving  it  would  be  possible  for  them  to 
give  adequate  relief  in  every  case ;  and  this  is  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  things  most  needed  in  any  good  system  of  relief, 
although  it  is  a  necessity  but  little  recognized  in  prac- 
tice, even  by  those  who  most  loudly  advocate  the  value 
of  relief  in  theory.  Yet  can  any  one  really  approve  of 
inadequate  relief  ?  Can  any  one  really  approve  of  giv- 
ing fifty  cents  to  a  man  who  must  have  five  dollars, 
trusting  that  some  one  else  will  give  the  four  and  a  half 
dollars,  and  knowing  that,  to  get  it,  the  person  in  distress 


182  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

must  spend  not  only  precious  strength  and  time,  but 
more  precious  independence  and  self-respect  ?  Is  it  not 
a  pity  that  all  relief  societies  give  to  so  many  people,  and 
give  so  little  to  each  ?  Would  it  not  be  far  better  if  each 
were  to  concentrate  upon  a  smaller  number  of  persons,  and 
to  see  that  each  one  of  those  was  reall}^  helped,  that  the 
relief  given  to  them  really  relieved  them  ? 

There  are  many  families  in  every  citj^  who  get  relief 
(only  a  little  to  be  sure,  but  enough  to  do  harm)  who  ought 
not  to  have  one  cent,  —  families  where  the  man  can  work, 
but  will  not  work.  The  little  given  out  of  pity  for  his 
poor  wife  and  children  really  intensifies  and  prolongs  their 
suffering,  and  often  prevents  the  man  from  doing  his  duty 
by  making  him  believe  that,  if  he  does  not  take  care  of 
them,  some  one  else  will.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
many  families  who  ought  to  have  their  whole  support  given 
them  for  a  few  years,  —  widows,  for  instance,  who  cannot 
both  take  care  of  and  support  their  children,  and  yet  who 
ought  not  to  have  to  give  them  up  into  the  blighting  care 
of  an  institution;  and  these  families  get  nothing,  or  get 
so  little  that  it  does  them  no  good  at  all,  only  serving 
to  keep  them  also  in  misery  and  to  raise  false  hopes,  or  else 
to  teach  them  to  beg  to  make  up  what  they  must  have. 

Ought  not  charitable  people  to  manage  in  some  way  to 
remedy  these  two  opposite  evils  —  to  do  more  for  those 
who  should  have  more,  and  to  do  nothing  for  those  who 
should  have  nothing,  saving  money  by  discriminating,  and 
thus  having  enough  to  give  adequate  relief  in  all  cases  ? 

The  knowledge  which  the  Charity  Organization  Society 
can  give  would  help  societies  and  churches  to  distinguish 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      183 

more  carefully  than  they  do  now  between  the  people  who 
should  not  have  any  relief  at  all  and  those  who  should  have 
a  great  deal. 

All  relief -giving,  however,  is  such  an  unnatural  way  of 
remedying  the  evils  from  which  our  fellow-creatures  suffer 
that,  even  when  it  is  necessary,  as  it  too  often  is,  it  tends 
to  pervert  and  injure  the  character  of  those  who  receive 
it.  Therefore,  in  order  to  make  it  as  little  dangerous  as 
possible,  moral  care  must  always  go  with  it.  Even  the 
widow  with  the  little  children,  if  she  finds  that  everything 
is  made  easy  for  her,  may  lose  her  energy,  may  even,  by 
being  relieved  of  anxiety  for  them,  lose  her  love  for  the 
children ;  and  the  children  themselves  growing  up  without 
feeling  the  necessity  of  exerting  themselves,  may  be  ruined. 
Therefore,  a  watchful  friend  must  always  be  on  hand  to 
see  that  these  evils  do  not  follow  upon  the  receipt  of  the 
physical  help  which  must  be  given ;  and  this  friend  ought 
logically  to  come  from  one  of  the  religious  bodies,  and 
ought  to  have  a  special  training  to  prepare  him  or  her  for 
this  work  of  moral  oversight.  Already  in  some  churches 
in  New  York  there  are  bodies  of  visitors  who  receive  such 
training.  There  are  also  small  bodies  of  visitors  in  the 
various  districts  into  which  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  has  divided  the  city ;  but  these  bodies  of  visitors 
are  far  too  small,  and  the  districts  are  far  too  large. 

Instead  of  eleven  district  committees  there  should  be 
forty  local  centres,  whether  established  by  the  Charity  Or- 
ganization Society  or  otherwise  it  matters  very  httle; 
but  in  each  of  these  local  centres  committees  should  be 
formed,  and  here  delegates  from  all  the  local  charities  and 


184  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

from  churches  should  meet  each  week  or  of tener  to  consult 
together,  not  only  as  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole  of  their  re- 
spective districts,  seeking  always  to  make  the  work  of  the 
various  societies  and  churches  as  effective  as  possible  by 
thorough  cooperation,  but  also  to  consider  and  consult 
as  to  the  best  means  of  helping  any  person  or  family  in 
distress,  who  had  applied  for  help  or  about  whom  any  one 
came  to  ask  advice.  To  these  meetings  should  also  come 
any  individual  who  is  especially  interested  in  trying  to 
help  and  raise  families  of  unworthy  and  shiftless  and 
disreputable  character,  and  they  should  receive  such 
advice  and  assistance  as  the  members  of  the  committees^ 
from  their  study  of  such  matters,  ought  to  be  exception- 
ally competent  to  give.  Thus,  in  the  case  of  a  person  ap- 
plying to  any  church  society  for  assistance,  the  regular 
course  pursued  should  be  as  follows  :  First,  all  the  particu- 
lars known  should  be  sent  to  the  Charity  Organization  Soci- 
ety, and  a  thorough  investigation  requested.  Then,  upoa 
receiving  all  the  information  as  to  the  person  concerned 
that  could  be  supplied  in  this  wa}'-,  if  it  were  found  that  no 
one  had  the  care  of  the  family,  the  church  should  appoint 
an  especially  intelligent  and  sympathetic  man  or  woman 
to  take  the  moral  oversight ;  and  he  should  at  once  go  to 
the  district  committee  meeting  nearest  to  his  own  house^ 
lay  the  facts  before  the  committee,  and  ask  their  advice 
and  help.  If  physical  relief  were  required,  the  best 
source  from  which  to  obtain  it  would  be  pointed  out; 
and,  in  any  event,  the  visitor  would  at  least  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  talking  over  the  possible  ways  of  helping,  and 
would  get  encouragement  from  the  experience  of  persons 


THE   CHARITY  ORGANIZATION   SOCIETY      185 

who  were  constantly  considering  the  needs  of  just  such 
famihes. 

In  regard  to  physical  relief  to  able-bodied  men  and 
women  the  experience  of  1893-1894  would  seem  to  show 
that,  while  relief-work  as  a  regular  annual  means  of  giving 
relief  would  probably  be  very  bad  for  the  community  as  a 
whole  and  be  encouraging  the  less  efficient  and  energetic 
workers  to  depend  on  it,  yet  its  influence  on  the  character 
of  the  individual  may  be  good,  and  if  very  carefully 
guarded,  it  may  be  the  best  means  of  giving  such  relief 
as  is  absolutely  necessary  and  inevitable. 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  be  supposed  to  be  presenting  an 
ideal  relief  system.  There  is  no  ideal  system  of  relief. 
For  relief-giving  by  system  is  an  evil ;  and  even  though  a 
necessary  evil,  as  at  the  present  stage  of  our  social  de- 
velopment it  seems  to  be,  j^et  the  only  ideal  in  connection 
with  it  is  that  it  may  in  time  render  itself  or  be  rendered 
unnecessary.  I  think  no  one  yet  knows  how  this  can 
be  done;  but  the  means  by  which  we  shall  reach  the 
knowledge  of  how  to  do  it  I  believe  to  be  evident,  and  that 
is  by  the  patient  and  careful  study  by  educated  men  and 
women  who  go  to  live  as  neighbors  of  the  poor  workers 
in  the  crowded  parts  of  the  city,  of  the  actual  people  who 
must  be  helped  and  of  the  conditions  that  must  be  changed. 

The  fact  that  such  educated  neighbors  can  do  a  great 
deal  to  make  those  around  them  happier  and  better  is 
self-evident ;  for,  however  wonderfully  the  overruling 
and  omnipotent  ''Power  that  makes  for  Righteousness" 
may  turn  what  seem  to  us  fatal  surroundings  into  a  means 
of  grace  to  the  human  soul,  yet  there  are  many  ways  in 


186  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

which  pleasure  and  beauty  can  be  brought  to  toilers  in 
swarming  tenement  houses  by  those  who  have  had  larger 
opportunities.  In  daily  intercourse  with  the  children,  with 
the  boys  and  girls,  and  with  the  young  men  and  women, 
much  can  be  done  to  awaken  nobler  ambitions  and  create 
higher  ideals.  But,  important  as  this  personal  work  is, 
I  do  not  think  it  the  most  important  work  to  be  done. 
The  chief  value,  to  my  mind,  of  the  colonizing  of  the 
more  highly  educated  and,  from  a  worldly  standpoint, 
more  favored  individuals  among  those  who  live  in  densely 
crowded  neighborhoods,  and  work  hard  for  a  good  part  of 
every  twenty-four  hours,  is  that  they  come  to  know  them, 
to  know  their  lives  and  to  know  their  needs,  and  can  report 
them  to  the  people  who  have  the  power  to  supply  what  is 
needed. 

Experts  are  required  now  in  every  field.  Most  people 
have  not  time  to  attend  to  more  than  their  own  immediate 
surroundings  and  business.  So  many  things  press  for 
attention  that  much  which  is  of  the  greatest  importance 
is  pushed  aside,  and  therefore  it  is  necessary  that  each 
part  of  the  public  weal  should  be  especially  studied  by 
those  who  devote  themselves  to  personal  observation  and 
the  collection  of  facts;  and  such  students  and  collectors 
of  facts  in  sociology  are,  or  ought  to  be,  the  men  and 
women  who  take  up  their  residence  among  the  plain 
people,  as  Lincoln  called  them,  and  observe  their  daily 
life  near  at  hand  and  all  day  long  and  every  day. 

The  reason  charity,  so  called,  although  it  is  sad  to 
degrade  a  beautiful  word,  is  so  often  discredited,  and 
more  often  so  discreditable,  is  that  it  has  usually  worked 


THE  CHARITY   ORGANIZATION   SOCIETY      187 

without  any  knowledge  of  this  daily  life.  It  has  kept 
out  of  the  way  of  it,  and  has  tried  in  a  feeble  and  ineffectual 
manner  to  deal  with  the  broken  fragments,  the  failures, 
thrown  out  by  it.  When  men  and  women  have  broken 
down  because  of  long  hours  of  overwork  and  horribly 
bad  surroundings  to  work  in,  charity  has  put  them  into 
hospitals,  and  has  either  never  thought  or  said  anything 
about  the  causes  of  the  breakdown,  or  it  has  complacently 
remarked  that  it  was  a  pity  that  such  conditions  were 
necessary  for  business  reasons. 

When  charity  has  found  men  and  women  drunken 
and  shiftless  and  unable  to  care  for  their  children,  charity 
has  taken  their  children  away  from  them,  and  has  said 
''That's  the  way  poor  people  are" ;  but  it  has  not  asked 
why  they  are  so  or  tried  to  prevent  their  being  so. 

When  girls  have  gone  wrong  and  boys  have  stolen, 
charity  has  provided  refuges  for  the  girls  and  has  put  the 
boys  into  prison,  and  has  talked  as  if  such  ruin  of  lives, 
and  what  looks  like  ruin  of  souls,  were  inevitable,  never 
even  wondering  what  other  outlet  for  the  natural  love  of 
pleasure  and  adventure,  so  carefully  provided  for  in  the 
case  of  other  boys  and  girls,  there  was  for  these  boys 
and  girls. 

Now,  that  is  all  changed  or  is  changing:  and  it  is,  I 
believe,  because  men  and  women  are  learning  the  actual 
life  of  the  mass  of  workers  who  do  not  break  down,  but  who 
only  die ;  who  are  not  drunken  and  shiftless,  but  who  lead 
lives  of  such  heroic  self-sacrifice  and  devotion  as  we  cannot 
lead  because  the  demand  is  not  made  on  us,  and  of  the 
lives  of  the  boys  and  girls,  who  grow  up  brave  and  pure 


188  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

through  and  in  the  midst  of  circumstances  which,  as  I 
have  said,  seem  to  us  fataL 

But,  notwithstanding  all  the  virtues  and  all  the  heroism 
of  the  mass  of  the  people,  they  do  need  and  ought  to  have 
a  great  many  things  they  do  not  have,  and  the  whole 
community  ought  to  help  them  to  get  them ;  but  the  first 
step  toward  helping  them  to  get  them  is  to  know  exactly 
what  they  need,  and  this  knowledge  the  residents  in 
college  settlements  and  the  individual  residents  in  tenement 
houses  must  get  for  us.  They  must  report  the  neglect  of 
the  city  government  to  do  its  duty,  whether  as  street- 
cleaners,  as  police  or  as  educators.  They  must  report  the 
oppression  of  employers,  whether  the  oppression  be  the  re- 
sult of  individual  carelessness  or,  as  is  often  the  case,  the 
result  of  trade  conditions.  They  must  cry  aloud  for  more 
air,  more  space,  for  a  larger  and  better  life  in  every  way 
for  the  great  masses  of  men  and  women  in  our  cities. 

Not  only  does  self-interest  require  that  we  help  to 
lift  our  fellow-men,  to  make  them  useful  citizens,  law- 
abiding,  and  industrious,  but  no  one  can  escape  re- 
sponsibility for  the  intellectual  and  moral  development 
of  the  race.     As  Drummond  says : 

''The  directing  of  part  of  the  course  of  evolution  has 
passed  into  the  hands  of  man.  A  spectator  of  the  drama 
for  ages,  too  ignorant  to  know  that  it  was  a  drama,  and 
too  impotent  to  do  more  than  play  his  little  part,  .  .  . 
Nature  meant  him  to  become  a  partner  in  her  task,  and 
share  the  responsibility  of  the  closing  acts.  It  is  not  given 
him  as  yet  to  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades  or 
to  unloose  the  bands  of  Orion.  In  part  only  can  he  make 
the  winds  and  the  waves  obey  him  or  control  the  falling 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      189 

rain.  .  .  .  But  in  a  far  grander  sphere  and  in  an  infinitely 
profounder  sense  has  the  sovereignty  passed  to  him.  For 
he  finds  himself  the  guardian  and  the  arbiter  of  his  per- 
sonal destiny  and  of  that  of  his  fellow-men .  The  moulding 
of  his  life  and  of  that  of  his  children's  children  in  measure 
lies  with  him.  ...  He  shapes  the  path  of  progress  for 
his  country  and  his  time.  The  evils  of  the  world  are 
combated  by  his  remedies,  its  passions  are  stayed,  its 
wrongs  redressed,  its  energies  for  good  or  evil  directed 
by  his  hand.  For  unnumbered  miUions  he  opens  or 
shuts  the  gates  of  happiness,  and  paves  the  way  for 
misery  or  social  health.  Never  before  was  it  known  and 
felt  with  the  same  solemn  certainty  that  man  .  .  .  must 
be  his  own  maker  and  the  maker  of  the  world.'' 

Charity  Problems^ 

What  is  the  ideal  of  charity  ?  It  is  the  good  Samaritan, 
who  took  infinite  pains  to  help  one  stranger  whom  he 
chanced  upon  by  the  way,  and  if  every  one  should  be 
neighborly  in  this  sense  to  any  one  who  falls  into  distress 
and  comes  naturally  into  his  life,  no  one  would  have  to  go 
about  hunting  for  people  to  help,  or,  in  other  words, 
there  would  be  no  need  of  '^  charities." 

Charity  is  not  an  occupation ;  it  is  not  even  a  piece  of 
life.  It  is  fife.  It  pervades  all  relations.  A  man  cannot 
be  charitable  and  yet  overwork  and  underpay  his  em- 
ployee ;  a  woman  cannot  be  charitable  and  yet  browbeat 
and  scorn  her  servants  or  back-bite  her  acquaintances. 

If  the  nature  is  charitable,  it  will  show  itself  in  charity  to 
all,  rich  and  poor  alike.  If  the  nature  is  uncharitable, 
to  be  a  member  of  twenty  boards,  to  know  all  about  the 
1  Published  in  the  Charities  Review^  January,  1896. 


190  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

dangers  of  pauperizing  and  the  advantages  of  organized 
charity,  will  not  make  it  otherwise,  but  will  probably 
intensify  the  hardness.  And  because  charities  are  con- 
founded with  charity,  because  to  be  connected  with 
charities  does  in  some  unaccountable  manner  satisfy  the 
conscience  which  thus  fails  to  feel  its  own  selfishness  and 
cruelty,  are  among  the  reasons  why  charities  do  inter- 
fere with  true  charity.  It  seems  often  as  if  charities 
were  the  insult  which  the  rich  add  to  the  injuries  which 
they  heap  upon  the  poor.  But  people  usually  are  not  to 
blame  for  substituting  charities  for  charity,  at  least 
not  entirely  to  blame.  They  do  not  see  the  world  as  it  i& 
because  they  have  not  been  brought  up  to  do  so,  and  not 
having  much  imagination,  they  do  not  for  themselves 
discover  the  truth,  and  it  is  necessary  to  understand  the 
facts  if  this  error  is  to  be  avoided. 

The  facts  are  that  the  great  mass  of  the  population  in 
any  community  is  working  hard  to  keep  that  community 
alive.  They  work  primarily  for  themselves,  but  they 
work  also  for  all  the  idlers,  who,  though  they  do  nothing 
to  keep  themselves  alive,  yet  are  kept  alive  and  are  fed 
and  clothed,  some  at  but  little  expense  per  head  to  the 
workers,  and  others  at  a  large  expense  per  head.  Of  course 
it  is  this  great  mass  of  men  and  women  who  work  who 
ought  to  be  the  objects  of  charity,  of  love,  partly  because 
they  are  the  great  mass,  partly  because  they  are  the 
workers,  partly  because  their  lives  are  very  hard  and 
could  be  made  much  easier  by  a  little  charity,  even  by  a 
very  little  thought,  on  the  part  of  their  fellow-men. 

Strangely  enough,  however,  this  great  mass  of  the  people^ 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      191 

these  men  who  work  all  night  m  cellars  to  give  us  our 
daily  bread,  these  men  who  bring  the  milk  and  the  vege- 
tables to  us  every  day,  these  men  who  dig  out  from  dark 
caverns  the  coal  that  warms  us,  who,  by  their  faithfulness 
and  intelligence,  carry  us  safely  on  thundering  railwaj'- 
trains,  to  whose  watchfulness  we  confide  our  lives  without 
a  thought ;  these  women  who  cook  for  us  and  wait  upon 
us  and  clothe  us;  all  these  men  and  women  without 
whom  we  could  not  live  in  comfort  for  one  day,  without 
whom  we  could  not  live  at  all  for  one  month,  we  forget. 
We  seldom  think  of  them  at  all,  unless  we  are  forced  to. 
When  they  undertake  to  seek  some  slight  improvement 
in  their  lot,  we  have  to  think  of  them,  but  it  is  with  some- 
thing of  the  feeling,  perhaps,  which  the  slaveholder  felt 
upon  hearing  of  an  insurrection  of  slaves.  Their  hard- 
ships, their  suffering,  their  weary  bones  and  aching  heads 
are  nothing  to  us ;  we  accept  all  the  benefits  they  confer 
on  us  and  never  even  give  them  a  thought,  far  less  our 
love,  our  charity. 

They  usually  do  not  complain  or  ask  for  sympathy, 
and  they  seldom  receive  any.  They  struggle  and  work, 
they  live  and  die,  and  very  few  people  trouble  themselves 
about  them,  little  realizing  that  instead  of  helping  them, 
they  are  often  sadly  hindering  them,  and  even  adding 
to  their  hardships  by  their  vain  efforts  to  help  an  entirely 
different  set  of  people  —  the  people  who  are  the  ^^benefi- 
ciaries of  charities."  These  are  the  poor  idlers,  the 
failures,  the  broken-down  men  and  women  who  could  not 
stand  the  strain  of  the  working  life  because  of  some  special 
weakness  either  of  body  or  mind  or    character.     These 


192  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

people  do  appeal  to  charity,  they  do  ask  for  help, 
they  do  enlarge  upon  their  distress;  and  though,  as  I 
have  said,  to  try  to  help  them,  though  vainly,  often  re- 
sults in  increase  of  suffering  to  the  great  mass  of  men  and 
women  who  work,  yet  charities  still  continue  and  still 
are  supported  by  thoughtless  people  who  pride  themselves 
on  their  kindheartedness.  This  harm  is  done  in  various 
ways.  Charities  sometimes  tempt  their  beneficiaries 
to  idleness,  and  sometimes  they  do  not.  In  the  first  case 
the  harm  done  is  directly  to  the  persons  so  tempted,  who 
thus  lose  character,  independence,  and  the  means  of  self- 
support,  and  indirectly  only  to  the  mass  of  the  workers, 
who  thereby  have  a  larger  number  of  idlers  to  support, 
while  their  own  numbers  are  also  diminished  by  deser- 
tions to  the  ranks  of  the  idlers. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  charities  which  do  not  tempt 
to  idleness  often  do  not  do  much  harm  and  sometimes  even 
do  good  to  the  persons  they  undertake  to  help,  while 
they  do  a  great  deal  of  injury  to  large  bodies  of  workers. 
This  harm  is  done  by  giving  relief  in  aid  of  wages,  as 
it  is  technically  called;  that  is,  by  giving  small  sums  to 
persons  who,  in  consequence,  are  enabled  to  work  for  less 
wages  than  they  otherwise  could  live  on,  so  that  they, 
competing  for  work,  underbid  other  workers,  and  gradu- 
ally, if  their  number  is  large  enough,  and  unfortunately 
a  very  few  comparatively  can  produce  this  effect,  bring 
down  the  wages  for  all  the  workers  in  their  particular 
trade. 

A  simple  illustration  will  show  how  this  happens.  Let 
us  imagine  a  small  town  where  twenty  women  go  out  to 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      193 

scrub  at  $1.50  a  day,  for  four  days  a  week,  having  a  hard 
time,  of  course,  but  managing  to  Hve.  Some  charitable 
ladies  in  this  town,  full  of  commiseration  for  four  or  J&ve  of 
these  women  whom  they  employ,  think  it  would  be  kind 
to  get  up  a  charitable  society  to  help  them.  Strangely 
enough,  it  does  not  occur  to  them  that  perhaps  the  best 
way  to  help  them  would  be  to  pay  $2  for  scrubbing.  No, 
that  would  '^ raise  wages,"  which  to  some  people  seems  the 
wickedest  thing  in  the  world;  but  a  charitable  society 
founded  on  the  most  approved  modern  lines,  which  will 
not  '*  pauperize"  these  poor  women,  is  exactly  the  thing ; 
so  it  is  organized,  and  each  woman  can  get  $2  worth  of 
sewing  a  week,  to  be  paid  for  from  the  funds  of  the  society. 
What  will  probably  happen  ?  There  being  some  competi- 
tion for  the  scrubbing,  the  women  who  secure  the  relief 
work  offer  to  do  scrubbing  at  $1.25  a  day  instead  of 
$1.50;  the  ladies,  charitable  and  others,  are  not  loath 
to  pay  less  than  formerly,  and  employ  those  who 
work  the  cheapest ;  then  gradually,  the  others  are  told 
by  their  employers  that  Mrs.  So-and-So  works  for  $1.25 
and  they  must  do  the  same,  and  so  the  result  is  that  the 
women  who  scrub  and  also  do  charity  sewing,  instead  of 
earning  $6  a  week  as  formerly,  earn  $7,  while  the  rest,  who 
only  scrub,  earn  $5  instead  of  $6.  That  is,  instead  of 
$120  paid  in  wages  each  week  to  twenty  women,  the 
twenty  women  get  $110  a  week,  of  which  $100  is  wages 
earned  for  real  work  and  $10  is  money  paid  for  relief 
work,  and  the  good  of  the  extra  dollar  a  week  to  the  five 
charity  workers  is  but  a  poor  offset  to  the  loss  of  a  dollar 
a  week  to  the  other  fifteen  women. 


194  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Nor  is  it  likely  that  the  harm  will  end  here.  For  prob- 
ably the  number  getting  charity  work  will  increase  and  the 
wages  go  still  lower  until  they  are  all  working  at  scrubbing 
at  $1  a  day  and  getting  $2  worth  of  sewing  a  week,  which 
would  mean  that  each  woman  earned,  as  before,  $6  a  week, 
but  it  would  be  $4  in  wages  and  $2  for  relief  work; 
that  is,  there  would  be  $80  paid  in  wages  each  week 
for  the  same  amount  of  scrubbing  as  formerly,  and  $40 
in  relief,  the  gain  to  the  women  being  nothing,  the  loss 
being  the  added  work  of  sewing  besides  the  loss  of  indepen- 
dence. 

This  is  no  hypothetical  case ;  it  is  exactly  what  happened 
all  over  England  from  1792  to  1834,  during  the  years 
when  relief  in  aid  of  wages  was  given  to  all  working 
men  from  the  public  funds  until  wages  were  brought 
down  so  low  that  there  were  no  working  people  in  England 
who  were  not  also  paupers. 

But  although  charities  are  dangerous,  especially  the 
large  charities  which  attract  all  the  weak  and  the  incom- 
petent to  depend  on  them,  charity  is  necessary,  and  also 
some  kinds  of  charities.  Charity  must  feel  for  the  great 
world  of  working  men  and  women,  must  earnestly  desire 
their  welfare,  listen  to  their  wrongs,  and  do  its  best 
to  help  them  in  their  efforts  to  shorten  their  hours  of 
work  and  increase  their  wages,  never  forgetting  also  that 
nothing  will  really  help  them  which  does  not  also  help  to 
raise  their  characters,  to  make  them  more  honest,  more 
industrious,  more  intelligent. 

Charity  must  be  extended  to  a  man's  own  immediate 
employees   and  to  all  who  work  for  him,  to  servants, 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      195 

clerks,  saleswomen,  and  demands  consideration  for  their 
welfare,  their  health,  their  feelings.  Educational  chari- 
ties are  always  good.  Too  much  money  and  time  and 
thought  cannot  be  given  to  teaching  of  all  kinds — knowl- 
edge to  the  ignorant,  wisdom  to  the  foolish,  skill  to  the 
helpless,  goodness  to  the  wicked,  that  is,  in  teaching 
people  to  be  and  to  do  something.  Emerson  says  :  '^He 
who  gives  me  something  does  me  a  low  benefit ;  he  who 
teaches  me  to  do  something  of  myself  does  me  a  high 
benefit." 

Finally,  it  is  necessary  to  protest  against  a  most  lament- 
able misunderstanding  of  what  is  called  organized  charity  ; 
people  suppose  it  to  mean  apparently  that  they  are 
each  to  put  a  little  money  into  a  machine,  and  that 
from  this  machine  there  will  come  out  a  great  quantity 
of  money,  which  will  be  wisely  and  kindly  distributed 
to  a  great  many  people.  They  do  not  pause  to  consider 
how  wisdom  and  kindness  are  to  be  developed  by  a 
machine  or  to  reflect  that  these  attributes  can  be  exer- 
cised only  by  human  beings  in  their  relations  to  human 
beings.  Organized  charity  means,  in  fact,  only  that 
charity,  real  charity,  love,  if  it  is  meant  to  reach  stran- 
gers, those  outside  the  natural  lines  of  our  own  lives, 
must  be  organized,  that  is,  must  be  properly  ordered, 
because  if  not,  if  it  be  disorganized  and  disorderly,  it 
will  do  harm  where  it  was  meant  to  do  good  in  the  ways 
already  described. 

Organization  does  not  dispense  with  human  sympathy. 
It  only  prepares  the  way  for  it.  As  a  system  of  water 
works  in  a  city  does  not  make  the  life-giving  water  unneces- 


196  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

sary,  but  only  offers  a  means  by  which  it  shall  reach 
those  who  need  it,  so  a  system  of  organized  charity 
merely  provides  the  means  by  which  sympathy  and  the 
desire  to  do  good  may  bring  life  and  hope  to  the  desolate 
and  oppressed.  It  reheves  the  charitable  of  no  duty. 
It  only  makes  their  duty  more  imperative,  because  clearer 
and  more  effective. 

The  True  Aim  of  Charity  Organization  Societies^ 

A  Charity  Organization  Society  means  a  society  for 
organizing  charity;  it  means  the  attempt  to  put  intelli- 
gence and  order  in  the  place  of  ignorance  and  chaos. 
The  first  society  of  the  kind  was  established  in  London  in 
1869  by  men  and  women  who  had  spent  their  whole  Uves 
in  working  for  the  poor  in  London,  and  who,  having  given 
time  and  thought  and  life  to  the  work,  had  become  con- 
vinced that  they  were  not  doing  any  good,  but  on  the  con- 
trary were  doing  harm.  They  found  that  they  were 
working  at  cross-purposes;  that  those  in  one  part  of 
London  were  ignorant  of  what  was  being  done  in  the 
other  parts ;  and  they  came  to  the  conclusion  that  what 
was  needed  was  more  intelligence,  not  more  feeling  and 
heart;  that  earnest  workers  who  were  trjdng  to  help 
those  in  distress  should  come  together,  compare  notes, 
and  help  each  other  to  accomplish  their  common  purposes. 

The  example  of  London  was  followed  by  Buffalo  in 
1877,  and  later  by  Philadelphia,  Boston,  New  York  and 
other  cities,  and  there  are  now  about  one  hundred  and 

^  Reprinted  from  the  Forum  for  June,  1896,  written  presumably  in 
1895. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      197 

ten  societies  in  the  United  States  that  work  on  this  prin- 
ciple of  associated  charity.  The  idea  has  never  been 
that  a  new  society  should  be  formed  to  do  new  work, 
but  that  the  existing  societies  should  unite  to  do  their 
work  better  and  accomplish  their  primary  object  —  the 
helping  of  people  in  distress. 

The  cause  of  the  great  difference  in  the  new  way  of 
doing  the  old  work  in  London  was  that  the  men  and 
women  who  established  the  Charity  Organization  Society 
beheved  that  poverty  could  be  cured ;  they  believed,  as  a 
result  of  their  lifelong  study  of  it,  that  poverty  was  due 
to  certain  causes  which  were  removable;  and  that  has 
always  been  the  fundamental  distinction  between  the 
old  and  the  new  charity.  The  old  charity  accepted 
the  idea  that  the  distress  of  poverty  and  pauperism  is 
necessary.  The  new  charity  rejects  this  idea;  it  says 
that  poverty  and  distress  are  due  to  certain  causes  which 
usually  have  their  roots  in  the  character  of  the  people 
who  are  in  distress,  and  therefore  its  great  aim  is  to  influ- 
ence the  character  of  those  whom  it  seeks  to  help. 
And  if  in  England,  where  the  struggle  for  existence  is  so 
much  more  severe  than  it  is  in  the  United  States,  men 
and  women  who  had  given  their  lives  to  charitable  work 
were  able  to  agree  that  the  usual  cause  of  poverty  is  to  be 
found  in  some  deficiency,  moral,  mental,  or  physical,  in 
the  person  who  suffers,  it  certainly  can  be  accepted  as 
still  more  generally  true  in  this  country.  And  this, 
which  makes  the  daily  work  of  charity  discouraging,  is, 
rightly  looked  at,  an  encouragement.  If  it  could  be  said 
that  there  were  in  the  United  States  numbers  of  honest, 


198  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

industrious,  intelligent,  and  energetic  people  who  were  in 
a  chronic  state  of  distress  and  suffering,  that  would  be  a 
horrible  situation ;  and  yet  it  would  be  a  situation  which 
would  make  the  helping  of  them  easier  and  more  encom-ag- 
ing  than  is  the  helping  of  the  people  that  now  have  to  be 
dealt  with;  for,  since  their  distress  is  due  to  inherent 
faults,  either  physical,  mental,  or  moral,  it  becomes  very 
difficult  to  cure  it. 

But  besides  the  weaknesses  which  make  difficult  the 
helping  of  people  who  want  help,  there  are  weaknesses  of 
the  would-be  helpers  which  make  it  far  more  difficult. 
The  development  of  character  is  not  easy.  It  requires  a 
great  deal  of  intelligence,  patience  and  sympathy;  and 
it  requires,  moreover,  as  a  foundation,  a  correct  concep- 
tion, not  only  of  the  people  who  need  help  at  the  moment, 
but  of  the  whole  population  of  the  world  in  general.  This 
may  seem  an  extreme  statement,  but  it  is  true.  The 
theory  that  there  are  two  classes  of  people,  the  rich  and  the 
poor,  and  that  the  rich  support  the  poor  by  giving  them 
work  and  money,  is  contrary  to  the  truth ;  and  those  who 
hold  that  view  are  incapacitated  from  being  of  very  much 
use  to  their  fellow-men. 

The  fact  is  that  the  population  of  the  world  is  divided 
into  two  classes,  two  very  important  classes,  but  poverty 
and  riches  are  not  the  distinction  between  them.  The 
distinction  is  one  of  character  and  life.  The  workers 
and  the  idlers  constitute  the  two  classes  into  which 
human  beings  are  divided.  The  workers  are  those  who 
usefully  serve  their  fellow-men;  and  they  are  workers, 
whatever  be  their  occupation,  if  this  condition  of  useful 


THE   CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      199 

service  is  complied  with.  They  may  spend  all  night 
mixing  bread;  they  may  lie  for  ten  hom-s  every  day  on 
their  backs  in  the  dark,  hundreds  of  feet  under  ground, 
picking  out  coal ;  they  may  set  type  all  night  in  a  news- 
paper office ;  they  may  sew  all  day,  or  wait  on  table,  or 
wash  clothes,  or  cook,  or  run  errands;  they  may  plan 
railroads;  they  may  superintend  factories;  they  may 
write  poems ;  they  may  sing,  or  act,  or  preach,  or  teach ; 
they  are  always  workers,  if  what  they  do  is  of  use  to  the 
world.  The  idlers  are  the  people  who  live  on  the  workers. 
They  may  be  rich  or  they  may  be  poor ;  and  one  pecuHar- 
ity  of  the  poor  idler  is  usually  absolute  degeneration  of 
character.  It  is  a  sad  fact  that  a  worker  is  easily  converted 
into  an  idler,  and  it  is  this  fact  which  makes  the  attempt  to 
help  unfortunate  people  so  difficult  a  matter.  The  truth 
is  that,  looked  at  from  a  temporal  amd  material  point  of 
view,  the  mass  of  the  world's  workers  have  a  hard  time  of 
it.  There  is  little  room  for  enjoyment,  often  no  room 
for  self-culture,  for  the  common  worker.  He  has  to  forego 
many  of  the  pleasures  and  some  of  what  many  people 
call  the  necessaries  of  life;  and  often  the  uncommon 
worker,  the  captain  of  industry,  or  the  genius  in  any  de- 
partment of  work,  has  also  to  toil  terribly,  as  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  puts  it.  To  the  uncommon  worker,  the  genius 
whose  high  intelligence  and  noble  nature  enable  him  to 
see  the  real  value  of  things,  to  live  laborious  days  is 
not  a  hardship,  and  he  cannot  be  tempted  by  the  offer  of 
any  of  the  lower  pleasures  to  give  up  what  is  in  reality  the 
highest  function  of  his  nature.  But  alas  !  the  common 
mass  of  men  and  women  is  not  made  of  such  stuff.     They 


200  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

seem  to  need  the  pressure  of  necessity  to  force  them  to 
exercise  their  faculties. 

And  in  the  different  meanings  to  different  people  of  this 
word  necessity  is  to  be  found,  in  a  great  degree,  the  cause 
of  the  great  differences  in  their  condition.  I  am  ignoring, 
of  course,  the  pressure  of  unjust  social  laws  and  legislative 
enactments  which  produce  hardship  and  cause  more 
people  to  become  idlers  than  would  otherwise  be  the 
case.  But  while  acknowledging  this  unfortunate  effect 
of  unjust  conditions,  I  still  believe  that  one  principal  cause 
of  the  great  differences  in  the  material  comfort  of  different 
classes  of  persons  lies  in  their  standard  of  living,  or,  in 
other  words,  in  their  view  of  what  are  the  necessaries 
of  life.  The  ex-slave  of  some  of  the  West  India  islands, 
where  there  is  much  common  land,  where  the  climate 
makes  clothing  unnecessary,  and  where  one  bread-tree 
will  furnish  sufficient  food  for  a  family,  has  so  far 
lowered  his  standard  that  he  desires  nothing ;  and  so  he 
plants  his  bread-tree,  makes  his  hut,  and  will  not  work  for 
himself  or  any  one  else,  having  all  the  necessaries  of  his 
life  without  working.  Nor  does  the  pauper  work  in 
those  other  countries  where  clothes  are  required,  and 
food  ready  to  eat  does  not  grow  on  trees  which  can  be 
had  for  the  planting,  but  where  food,  clothing,  and  shelter 
can  be  got  from  the  public  without  any  unpleasant  ac- 
companiments;  for,  although  he  wants  more  than  the 
black  man,  still  he  can  get  all  he  wants  without  work. 
And  going  higher  up  the  social  ladder  and  coming  to  the 
man  who  wants  a  good  house,  good  clothes,  and  good  food, 
but  who  gets  all  these  from  his  father,  we  find  that  he  does 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      201 

not  work  for  exactl}^  the  same  reason  that  keeps  the  black 
man  and  the  pauper  from  working.  He  gets  all  he 
wants  without  working.  Such  being  the  tendency  of 
human  beings  not  to  work  when  they  can  get  what^are  to 
them  necessaries  without  it,  a  high  standard  of  Uving  is 
one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  raising  the  condition 
of  the  people.  And  one  of  the  great  dangers  to  be  guarded 
against  in  this  country  is  the  lowering  of  the  standard  of 
hving  by  the  influx  of  foreigners.  This  also  points  to  the 
most  important  service  that  can  be  done  for  these  for- 
eigners, which  is  to  raise  their  standard  of  living  imtil 
they  will  not  live  in  filthy  tenement  houses,  or  allow  their 
children  to  go  without  education  for  the  sake  of  the  pit- 
tance that  they  can  earn,  or  work  for  wages  upon  which  it 
is  impossible  to  live  decently  and  bring  up  a  family  to  be 
healthy,  intelligent  and  self-respecting  members  of  the 
community. 

Now,  by  this  long  and  rather  roundabout  road  I  have 
come  back  to  the  various  things  which  charity  organiza- 
tion societies  attempt  to  do  for  the  people  who  are 
unfortunate  and  who  need  help.  The  object  is  to 
make  them  workers  and  not  idlers,  and  to  educate  them 
to  a  higher  standard  of  living  if  they  happen  to  have  a 
low  one.  But,  in  order  to  come  to  any  decision  as  to  the 
kind  of  help  which  any  person  or  family  will  require,  it  is 
necessary  first  to  learn  to  know  each  of  them,  to  find 
out  whether  each  individual  is  a  worker  or  an  idler,  to 
know  the  character,  history,  and  general  tendency  of 
each;  and  this  cannot  be  done  except  by  really  sym- 
pathetic study.     It  is  impossible,  when  they  are  in  mis- 


202  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

/ 

fortune,  to  find  out  the  truth  by  a  few  questions.  The 
desire  to  help  them  and  to  help  them  in  the  best  way- 
must  be  sincere,  and  they  must  believe  that  it  is.  Then, 
having  learned  about  them,  it  is  always  necessary  to  re- 
member how  easy  it  is  to  tempt  the  average  human 
being  to  become  an  idler.  In  the  case  of  a  family  where 
the  misfortune  is  of  a  temporary  nature,  where  want  of 
work  has  brought  want  of  bread,  it  does  not  do  to  take 
the  course  that  seems  so  easy  and  natural  and  so  right  at 
first  sight.  It  does  not  do  to  send  groceries,  coal,  and 
clothes,  recklessly  pouring  out  before  those  tempted 
people  what  to  them  represents  the  results  of  two  or  three 
hard  days^  work,  and  giving  them  perhaps  the  first  lesson 
in  the  terrible  truth  that  it  is  very  easy  to  get  a  living 
without  work,  and  this  just  when  they  are  suffering 
from  the  torturing  difficulty  of  getting  work  to  make  a 
living.  Instead  of  this,  it  is  necessary  to  try  in  every 
way  to  devise  some  means  by  which  what  is  needed  may 
be  worked  for  by  some  one  in  the  family,  by  the  husband 
or  father,  if  it  is  in  any  way  possible.  Of  course,  some- 
times there  may  be  absolute  destitution,  requiring  imme- 
diate relief,  though  this  is  rare  in  any  community ;  and 
even  where  this  is  so,  it  is  possible,  by  supplying  what 
is  needed  for  one  day,  to  gain  time  to  think  over  some 
plan  by  which  the  head  of  the  family  can  provide,  as  he 
ought  to,  for  the  next  day,  the  next  week  and  for  all  the 
weeks  thereafter. 

There  are  many  men  and  women  who  are  suffering  be- 
cause they  are  confirmed  idlers,  and  who  are  idlers  partly 
because  they  can  do  no  work  well  enough  to  secure  decent 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      203 

wages  for  it,  and  partly  because  they  have  no  energy  and 
no  ambition ;  that  is,  they  suffer  from  radical  deficiencies, 
both  of  character  and  education,  which  act  and  react 
upon  each  other,  each  e\dl  only  aggravating  the  other. 
Such  people  as  these  are  the  most  difficult  and  dishearten- 
ing to  help,  for  there  seems  no  foundation  to  build  upon. 
But  if  there  are  children,  it  does  not  do  to  turn  away 
discouraged ;  it  does  not  do  to  take  the  easy  course  and 
supply  with  gifts  of  money  and  necessaries  all  the  defi- 
ciencies left  by  their  want  of  character  and  skill,  for  this 
is  to  educate  the  children  in  exactly  the  same  way  that 
the  parents  have  been  educated,  to  rely  on  other  people, 
—  to  be,  in  a  word,  paupers.  Such  families  as  these  will 
furnish  hard  work  for  years  to  any  one  who  is  sufficiently 
courageous  and  unselfish  to  undertake  their  care.  Of 
course,  the  objective  point  is  the  proper  education  of  the 
children,  to  make  them  feel  the  responsibilities  that 
their  parents  never  felt ;  to  teach  them  the  skill  that  their 
parents  never  learned ;  to  give  them  the  character  their 
parents  never  had ;  —  a  long,  hard  task,  requiring  courage, 
devotion,  and  the  realizing  sense  that  every  little  bit  of 
improvement  which  may  be  put  into  the  souls  of  those 
children  is  just  so  much  gain  to  them  for  eternity. 

There  are  dangers  that  beset  the  work  of  a  charity 
organization  society,  as  there  are  in  all  other  fields  of 
human  effort ;  and  one  is  the  making  a  fetich  of  investiga- 
tion. Investigation  of  this  kind  is  not  a  good  thing  in 
itself ;  it  is  an  e\dl.  It  is  not  desirable  to  try  to  learn  all 
the  facts  about  other  human  beings,  if  they  do  not  want 
to  tell  them ;  the  only  excuse  for  investigation  is  to  learn 


204  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  way  to  help  them.  Investigation  is  and  must  be  one 
of  the  cornerstones  of  all  the  work  of  scientific  charity, 
but  the  tendency  to  look  upon  it  as  a  thing  to  be  carried 
on  almost  for  its  own  sake  should  be  resisted.  It  is  an 
invasion  of  privacy  which  ought  not  to  be  undertaken 
except  with  the  object  of  helping  people ;  that  is  its  reason 
and  justification.  If  a  person  comes  asking  help,  and  con- 
tinues to  ask  it  after  it  has  been  explained  that  he  cannot 
be  helped  unless  inquiry  is  made  into  his  antecedents  and 
present  condition,  he  puts  himself  into  the  hands  of  the 
society  to  be  investigated,  and  he  must  be  investigated, 
because  he  cannot  be  helped  without  that  knowledge. 
What  a  person  needs  cannot  be  known  without  finding 
out  what  he  is ;  for  how  otherwise  can  one  help  him,  give 
him  what  he  needs  or  keep  from  him  what  he  ought  not 
to  have  ?  The  thing  to  be  constantly  kept  in  mind  is,  that 
investigation  is  not  an  end  in  itself  nor  a  good  thing  in 
itself,  but  that  it  is  the  means  to  a  good  end,  which  is  the 
helping  of  persons  in  distress. 

Still  another  danger  is  that  of  taking  short  views,  of 
thinking  only  of  the  people  in  distress ;  it  is  necessary 
to  think  also  of  the  effect  of  what  is  done  upon  other  people. 
Sometimes  helping  the  individual  may  be  objectionable 
because  it  will  injure  other  people.  For  instance,  it  is  said 
that  one  reason  of  the  very  low  wages  of  working  women 
in  Paris,  which  makes  it  impossible  for  any  woman  to  earn 
a  living  there  by  needlework,  is  the  work  that  is  done  in 
institutions  for  poor  women  and  sold  at  low  rates ;  that 
is,  those  good  people  who  have  charge  of  institutions  for 
poor  women  are  so  possessed  with  a  desire  to  maintain 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      205 

their  institutions  and  to  teach  the  few  women  they  have 
in  them,  that  they  injm-e  thousands  of  working  women 
for  the  sake  of  the  few  hundreds  they  have  directly  under 
their  eyes ;  and  this  lowering  of  wages  is  one  of  the  most 
disastrous  effects  of  any  extended  relief  system. 

Another  mistake  is  made  in  taking  a  negative  position ; 
in  telling  people  not  to  give  carelessly  and  selfishly,  in- 
stead of  telling  them  that  they  must  give  carefully  and 
thoughtfully ;  in  constantly  saying  don't,  instead  of  do. 
The  societies  thereby  expose  themselves  to  the  charge  of 
telling  people  that  they  must  not  help  the  poor,  when 
their  one  object  is  to  help  the  poor  and  make  other  peo- 
ple help  them. 

The  charity  organization  societies  fail  also  to  explain 
another  important  matter.  It  is  often  difficult  to  under- 
stand how  careless  giving  actually  increases  physical 
suffering  and  distress,  and  how  it  may,  and  often  actually 
does,  make  people  poorer.  But  it  does  so  by  undermining 
the  independence,  self-reliance,  and  energy  of  persons 
whose  only  capital  consists  in  those  invaluable  qualities. 
It  takes  from  them  their  only  source  of  income  and 
support,  and  does  not  give  them  enough  to  make  up  for  it. 
If  any  one  were  to  say,  '^I  will  pick  out  a  certain  family, 
and  I  will  give  them  a  hundred  dollars  a  month  for  the 
rest  of  their  natural  lives," — that  would  not  hurt  them  any 
more  than  a  hundred  dollars  coming  from  any  other  source. 
Such  income  often  prevents  people  from  working  for  their 
living;  but  it  also  often  leaves  them  free  to  do  something 
that  is  better  worth  their  while.  The  trouble  with  indis- 
criminate and  careless  giving  is  that  it  prevents  people 


206  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

from  making  the  exertion  necessary  for  their  own  support, 
while  it  does  not  give  them  enough  to  hve  on — only  enough 
to  starve  on;  and  by  and  by  gets  tired  of  giving  them 
even  that.  If  a  man  makes  eight  dollars  a  week  and 
four  are  given  him,  and  he  stops  making  the  eight,  as  he 
is  almost  sure  to  do,  he  is  certainly  very  much  poorer 
and  suffers  a  great  deal  more  than  while  he  made  the  eight ; 
and  in  the  nature  of  things  he  is  soon  left  without  either. 
The  aim  of  a  charity  organization  society  should  be 
to  get  people  to  do  far  more  in  every  way  for  those  in  dis- 
tress than  they  have  ever  thought  of  doing.  It  should 
teach  them  that  people  ought  to  give  more  time,  thought 
and  money  than  they  are  in  the  habit  of  giving.  To  take 
only  one  example,  the  case  of  a  widow  with  young  children. 
A  working  man  dies  and  leaves  a  little  money,  and  his 
widow  tries  to  get  along  with  it  and  succeeds  for  a  httle 
while;  then  it  is  gone,  and  she  and  the  children  are  de- 
pendent. What  is  the  usual  course  of  things?  People 
give  her  a  little  money  here,  a  little  money  there,  and  she 
spends  almost  all  her  time  running  around  for  the  money 
until  she  gets  to  be  a  regular  beggar,  and  the  children  beg 
and  the  whole  family  goes  to  destruction.  People  have 
given  them  money  because,  as  they  truly  say,  it  was  such 
a  pitiful  case.  What  ought  to  have  been  done?  First, 
all  the  relatives  should  have  been  made  to  give  something 
regularly ;  then  what  the  woman  could  have  earned,  with- 
out neglecting  her  children,  should  have  been  taken  into 
consideration ;  and  then  somebody  should  have  given 
her  enough  to  make  up  the  rest  of  her  support  in  a  decent 
way,  so  that  the  children  would  not  have  been  left  to  starve 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      207 

and  freeze  or  have  been  forced  to  beg.  But  there  are  very- 
few  people  who  are  wilUng  to  give  one  woman  ten  dollars 
a  month  for  ten  years,  diminishmg  it,  of  course,  as  the 
children  grow  older,  and  watching  over  them  all  that  time. 
That  is  the  way,  however,  in  which  dependent  widows 
and  children  should  be  taken  care  of.  It  is  a  question  of 
letting  them  become  beggars  or  of  watching  over  them 
and  giving  them  enough  to  make  sure  that  the  children  are 
brought  up  properly ;  the  watching  being  more  important 
and  more  difficult  than  the  relief. 

Every  different  case  of  distress  can  be  dealt  with  in  the 
same  spirit,  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  details.  The 
principles  of  the  charity  organization  societies  can  be 
summed  up  in  two  texts:  ''Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone,  ^'  which  applies  to  the  poor  as  much  as  to  the  rich ; 
and  ''What  shall  it  profit  a  man,  if  he  gain  the  whole  world 
and  lose  his  own  soul?" 

The  Evils  of  Investigation  and  Relief  ^ 

There  are  two  fundamental  axioms  which  every  charity 
organization  society  established  during  the  past  twenty- 
nine  years  in  any  part  of  the  world  has  tried  to  learn,  to 
put  into  practice  and  to  teach : 

1.  That,  in  order  to  help  any  person  who  is  in  chronic 
distress,  you  must  find  out  the  cause  of  the  distress. 

2.  That,  having  found  the  cause,  you  cannot  remove  it, 
or  cure  the  distress,  except  by  careful,  intelligent,  patient, 
personal  work.     Or,  to  put  it  in  other  words : 

1  A  paper  read  before  the  Training  Class  in  Practical  Philanthropic 
Work,  June  21,  1898.     Published  in  Charities  for  July,  1898. 


208  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Assuming  that  the  distress  is  a  disease,  in  order  to  cure 
it  you  must  learn  what  it  is  and  then  use  skill  and  con- 
science in  its  treatment. 

Surely  these  are  reasonable  axioms,  and  they  appear 
to  be  so  closely  connected,  so  mutually  interdependent, 
that  it  seems  evident  that  one  is  of  no  use  without  the 
other.  That  is,  if  you  are  not  prepared  to  give  careful, 
conscientious  treatment,  the  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  the 
trouble  is  useless,  and  to  give  careful  treatment,  unless 
you  know  what  the  trouble  is,  is  sheer  waste  of  time  and 
effort. 

But,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  these  two  hands 
of  charity,  so  to  speak,  must  necessarily  lose  their  useful- 
ness and  power  unless  they  work  together,  there  is  great 
danger  that  this  may  be  forgotten  even  by  charity  organi- 
zation workers  themselves,  since  the  two  functions  have 
to  be  performed  often  by  different  individuals,  and  it  is 
certain  that  the  teaching  of  the  charity  organization 
societies  has  been  misunderstood,  and  most  grievously 
misunderstood,  by  many  people  who  have  adopted  the 
perverted  opinion  that  to  inquire  into  the  cause  of  the 
trouble  afflicting  a  poor  man  or  woman  is  in  itself  a  good 
thing,  no  matter  what  use  is  made  of  the  knowledge 
obtained,  and  who  think  that  in  holding  this  opinion  and 
carrying  it  out  they  are  only  doing  what  the  charity  organi- 
zation societies  tell  them  to.  Therefore,  it  seems  to  me 
that  all  charity  organization  people  should  protest  against 
this  idea,  than  which  nothing  could  be  more  false  to  what 
we  really  do  believe  and  try  to  practice. 

We  had  in  New  York,  in  the  hard  times  of  1893  and 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     209 

1894,  a  most  painful  experience  in  this  regard.  The  very 
word  investigation  seemed  then  to  have  been  made  a 
sort  of  shibboleth  by  the  newspapers,  and,  in  too  many 
cases,  by  the  ministers  also.  To  every  remonstrance 
against  methods  of  reUef -giving  which  were  injurious  to 
the  character  of  those  who  were  supposed  to  be  helped 
by  them,  and  cruel  in  their  entire  disregard  of  their  com- 
fort, happiness,  and  moral  and  physical  well-being,  it 
seemed  to  be  considered  a  sufficient  answer  to  say,  ''All 
the  cases  have  been  thoroughly  investigated,"  and  it  was 
evidently  thought  that  this  answer  ought  to  be  entirely 
satisfactory  to  the  charity  organizationists,  even  though 
the  investigations  were  made,  not  for  the  purpose  of  fur- 
nishing guidance  and  knowledge  for  a  long  course  of 
treatment  by  which  weak  wills  might  be  strengthened, 
bad  habits  be  cured  and  independence  developed,  but  in 
order  that  a  ticket  might  be  given  by  means  of  which, 
after  a  long,  weary  waiting  in  the  street  in  the  midst  of 
a  crowd  of  miserable  people,  whose  poverty  and  beggary 
were  published  to  every  passer-by,  some  old  clothes  or 
some  groceries  might  be  got. 

Think  of  the  destruction  of  self-respect,  the  crushing 
out  of  all  shame,  the  fostering  of  everj^  unworthy  feeling, 
which  such  an  experience  must  result  in.  Yet  this  was 
what,  in  too  many  cases,  investigations  were  made  for  dur- 
ing that  winter  in  New  York,  and  both  newspapers  and 
ministers  seemed  alike  to  accept  the  theory  that  so  long  as 
the  people  were  found  upon  investigation  to  be  worthy, 
it  mattered  not  how  much  their  characters  were  injured, 
provided  only  their  bodies  were  fed,  or,  in  other  words, 


210  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

how  thoughtlessly  the  work  of  making  them  unworthy 
was  carried  on. 

Since  such  dreadful  results  can  come  from  a  failure  to 
recognize  the  true  uses  and  limits  of  investigation,  and 
since  they  have  arisen  from  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
teaching  of  charity  organizationists,  I  believe  it  to  be  our 
duty  to  declare  that  investigation,  in  itself,  is  bad; 
that  the  only  excuse  for  trespassing  upon  the  privacy  of 
other  human  beings,  for  trying  to  learn  facts  in  their  lives 
which  they  prefer  should  not  be  known,  for  seeking  to 
discover  the  weak  spots  in  their  characters,  for  trying  to 
find  out  what  pitiful  personal  sorrows  their  nearest  and 
dearest  have  brought  upon  them  —  the  only  justification, 
I  say,  for  doing  all  these  painful  things,  which  are  too  often 
included  in  the  single  word  investigation,  is  that  the 
person  in  distress  has  asked  you  to  help  him,  and  that  you 
mean  to  help  him,  to  help  his  soul  and  not  only  to  feed 
his  miserable  body,  and  that  you  cannot  help  him  unless 
you  do  know  all  about  him. 

But  I  must  turn  now  to  the  other  subject  in  regard  to 
which  the  views  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  have 
been  almost  as  much  misunderstood  as  they  have  been  in 
regard  to  investigation,  that  is,  the  subject  of  relief. 

Relief  is,  equally  with  investigation,  held  by  us  to  be  an 
evil,  but  in  our  present  state  of  society  to  be  also  a  neces- 
sary evil.  That  is,  we  consider  both  to  be  essential,  but 
both  to  be  very  dangerous,  and,  therefore,  that  both  must 
be  guarded  and  managed  so  as  to  do  as  much  good  and  as 
little  harm  as  is  possible  in  the  nature  of  things. 

The  reason  the  charity  organizationists  have  been  sup- 


THE  CHARITY   ORGANIZATION   SOCIETY      211 

posed  to  recommend  investigation  in  toto,  and  to  con- 
demn relief-giving  in  an  equally  wholesale  way,  is  because 
in  every  community  where  a  charity  organization  society 
is  started,  no  one,  as  a  rule,  believes  in  any  sort  of  investi- 
gation, and  every  one  does  believe  in  every  kind  of  relief, 
and,  therefore,  the  advantage  of  the  former  has  been 
dwelt  on,  and  attempts  have  been  made  to  show  the  dan- 
gers that  are  inseparable  from  the  latter. 

When  Edward  Denison  went  to  live  in  the  East  End  of 
London  during  the  great  '^East  End  Distress, ''  he  wrote 
to  a  friend  words  to  the  following  effect,  ^' Every  shilling 
I  give  away  does  fourpence  worth  of  good  by  helping  to 
keep  their  miserable  bodies  alive,  and  eightpence  worth 
of  harm  by  helping  to  destroy  their  miserable  souls/' 

I  believe  that  this  is  the  very  best  that  can  be  said  of 
relief,  and  of  relief  under  the  best  circumstances,  for  this 
relief  was  not  given  by  a  public  official  sitting  in  his  office 
and  dispensing  orders  to  persons  who  applied  for  them, 
nor  was  it  given  by  the  agent  of  a  charitable  society  sent 
out  to  try  to  discover  during  a  half-hour's  visit  whether 
a  family  she  has  never  seen  or  heard  of  before  requires 
relief.  This  relief  was  money  given  by  Edward  Denison 
himself,  a  man  of  exceptional  intellectual  and  moral  power, 
who  was  giving  his  life  as  well  in  trying  to  learn  how  to 
help  the  starving  people,  for  whose  sakes  he  had  left 
a  home  of  luxury  and  culture  to  live  in  the  dreary  waste  of 
East  London ;  and  it  was  given  to  people  whom  he  knew, 
whom  he  was  studying  day  and  night.  And  if  this  was 
the  result  of  his  almsgiving,  what  must  be  the  results  of 
the  common,  careless  relief-giving  that  we  know? 


212  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Personally,  I  believe  that  relief  is  an  evil  always. 
Even  when  it  is  necessary,  I  beUeve  it  is  still  an  evil.  One 
reason  that  it  is  an  evil  is  because  energy,  independence, 
industry,  and  self-reliance  are  undermined  by  it ;  and  since 
these  are  the  qualities  which  make  self-support  and  self- 
respect  possible,  to  weaken  or  undermine  them  is  a  serious 
injury  to  inflict  on  any  man.  Self-support  is  the  normal 
condition  of  all.  A  man  who  does  nothing  in  return  for  his 
living,  whether  he  lives  in  misery  or  in  luxury,  is  despi- 
cable, but  to  a  poor  man  the  injury  is  greatest,  for  his  power 
of  self-support  is  his  only  capital ;  he  has  absolutely  noth- 
ing else  to  depend  on ;  if  he  is  deprived  of  this  we  cannot 
give  him  anything  to  make  up  for  what  we  have  taken 
from  him,  even  on  the  side  of  material  well-being,  while 
of  the  fatal  moral  injury  done  we  can  have  no  doubt  on 
comparing  a  pauper  or  tramp  with  a  self-respecting  man. 
To  go  a  step  farther :  besides  supporting  himself,  a  man 
ought  to  support  his  wife  and  children,  and  his  indepen- 
dence is  destroyed  if  he  cannot,  and  to  do  it  for  him  is  to  put 
him  in  an  unnatural  and  degraded  position,  which,  if  con- 
tinued, will  surely  deprive  him  of  both  the  desire  and  the 
ability  to  do  his  duty.  If  we  could  only  thoroughly  rec- 
ognize that,  whatever  be  the  cause  of  dependence,  whether 
it  be  sickness,  want  of  work,  laziness  or  vice,  the  state  of 
dependence  is  bad,  and  produces  bad  results  in  the 
character,  which  reappear  as  bad  results  in  the  surround- 
ings, that  is,  in  more  and  more  poverty  and  suffering  — 
if,  I  say,  we  could  only  see  and  feel  how  baneful,  morally 
and  physically,  dependence  is,  we  should  be  so  possessed 
with  the  dangers  surrounding  the  giving  of  relief  that  we 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     213 

should  be  willing  to  take  any  pains,  to  suffer  ourselves, 
and  even  to  see  our  poor  friends  suffer  temporarily,  for 
the  sake  of  saving  them  from  those  fearful  permanent  evils. 
The  trouble  is  that  we  exaggerate  the  importance  of  physi- 
cal suffering. 

But  do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  am  talking  of  relief. 
Do  not  go  away  and  say  that  I  have  said  we  must  not  help 
people.  We  must  help  people;  we  all  need  help,  and 
always  shall.  Being  finite  beings,  it  is  impossible  to  im- 
agine that,  in  any  future  existence  even,  we  should  ever 
reach  a  point  where  we  should  be  self-sufficient  and 
need  no  help  from  others.  Since,  then,  every  human  being 
needs  help,  it  is  of  course  the  duty  of  every  human  being 
to  give  help ;  but,  unhappily,  we  often  do  not  know  how 
to  help,  and  there  are  many  ways  in  which  we  can  hurt 
people  even  when  we  mean  to  help  them.  It  is  a  pleasant 
truth  that  the  bulk  of  mankind  is  obliged,  by  the  very 
fact  of  living,  to  help  other  people,  whether  they  want  to 
or  not.  Every  one  who  works  at  what  is  useful  to  man- 
kind is  helping  his  fellow-men  every  day  of  his  life.  We 
do  not  think  about  it  very  often,  but  we  should  be  badly 
off  if  the  butchers  and  bakers  and  milkmen  and  brick- 
layers and  tailors  all  stopped  helping  us  for  any  length  of 
time.  Human  beings  have  come  to  rely  so  entirely  on 
each  other  for  their  daily  means  of  living,  that  they  would 
soon  (that  is,  those  of  us  who  live  in  cities  where  we  cannot 
supply  our  own  daily  wants)  perish  miserably  if  they  were 
not  helped  to  a  living  by  others.  Emmanuel  Swedenborg 
makes  real  charity  to  consist  in  this  work  of  supplying 
the  needs  of  our  fellow-creatures  by  the  discharge  of  our 


214  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

daily  duty.  The  great  mass  of  the  men  and  women  who 
earn  their  Hving,  whether  by  working  with  the  head  or 
the  hands,  may  feel  the  joy  of  a  sense  of  helping  their 
fellow-men ;  the  fact  that  they  are  paid  for  their  work  is 
proof  that  they  are  doing  something  that  somebody  wants 
done,  that  is,  something  that  may  be  presumed  to  be  use- 
ful. Of  course,  there  is  a  very  sad  exception.  People  who 
keep  saloons  or  gambUng  houses,  or  other  places  where  vice 
is  encouraged  and  indulged,  are  paid  for  their  work  and 
are  supplying  what  some  people  want ;  but  so  far  from 
being  useful  it  is  ruinous ;  it  destroys  instead  of  helping. 
Now,  in  all  our  attempts  to  help  other  people  we  must 
remember  that  this  distinction  exists :  we  may  do  for 
them  what  they  want  us  to  do,  and  yet  it  may  be  the  very 
most  cruel  thing  that  could  be  done  for  them.  We  see 
it  often  in  the  case  of  parents  and  children.  The  parents 
give  the  children  all  they  want,  and  instead  of  being 
helped  they  are  really  destroyed  by  it.  They  grow  up  lazy, 
selfish,  shiftless,  unfit  for  life.  We  see  it  often  between 
sisters  and  brothers ;  the  sisters  will  work  and  slave,  and 
let  their  brothers  live  on  them ;  and  the  sisters  are  unsel- 
fish and  noble  and  industrious,  and  the  brothers  are  selfish 
and  mean  and  dissipated.  It  may  seem  kind,  but  can  any- 
thing be  more  cruel  than  to  destroy  the  character,  the  soul, 
of  another  person  ?  What  is  a  little  ease  or  comfort  or 
pleasure  worth,  compared  to  nobiUty  of  character  ?  And 
yet,  as  I  have  said,  parents  who  think  they  love  their 
children,  sisters  who  think  the}^  love  their  brothers,  will, 
to  give  them  a  little  passing  happiness,  do  them  this  great 
wrong. 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      215 

Now,  is  not  this  the  very  wrong  that  rehef  does? 
To  give  people  a  Uttle  temporary  physical  help,  and  to 
please  ourselves,  we  are  willing  to  do  an  immense  moral 
harm  to  the  people  we  think  we  want  to  help,  and  also 
a  great  economic  harm  to  the  whole  community,  for  relief- 
giving  does  without  doubt  encourage  idleness  and  make 
idlers.  Now,  to  be  an  idler  is  a  very  bad  thing  —  bad 
for  the  man  himself,  whether  he  be  rich  or  poor,  because, 
as  I  have  said,  he  loses  energy,  intelligence,  and  persever- 
ance, and  finally  the  power  of  work,  and  becomes,  by  the 
disuse  of  these  faculties,  a  distinctly  lower  creature  than  he 
was  before,  or  than  he  might  have  been  had  they  been  de- 
veloped by  exercise ;  and  bad  for  the  community,  also,  for 
if  the  workers  of  a  community  have  to  support  many  per- 
sons in  idleness,  they  have  to  work  harder  and  to  fare  worse 
themselves  than  they  otherwise  would. 

Mazzini  says  somewhere :  "  The  human  soul,  not  the 
body,  should  be  the  starting-point  of  all  our  labors,  since 
the  body  without  the  soul  is  but  a  carcass,  and  the  soul, 
wherever  it  is  found  free  and  holy,  is  sure  to  mould  for 
itself  such  a  body  as  its  wants  and  vocation  require/' 
Then  is  not  teaching  a  charity  wide  and  broad  enough  to 
employ  every  one  with  a  head  and  a  heart  who  is  not 
already  busy  in  some  other  part  of  the  work  of  the  world  ? 
To  teach  some  one  something  — that  is  a  charity  in  which 
there  is  no  danger ;  it  is  a  charity  where  there  can  be  no 
overlapping ;  it  is  a  charity  of  which  there  cannot  be  too 
much,  and  the  good  results  of  which  will  never  end.  No 
matter  who  it  is,  no  matter  what  you  teach,  whether  it  be 
sewing  to  a  little  girl,  cooking  to  a  big  girl,  honesty  and 


216  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

purity  to  a  youth,  neatness  and  thrift  to  a  woman,  in- 
dustry and  self-control  to  a  man,  temperance,  moraUty, 
or  reUgion,  you  have  done  a  service,  and  a  service  which 
will  never  end. 

To  give  material  aid  is  nothing ;  food,  clothes,  fuel,  rent 
—  all  these  pertain  to  the  body  and  are  perishable ;  even 
if  they  do  no  harm,  they  certainly  do  Httle  good.  You 
give  one  month ;  the  next  month  you  must  give  again ; 
and  finally  there  is  no  result  to  show  except  usually  the 
need  of  more  fuel,  more  food,  more  rent. 

But  once  teach  something  of  value,  and  you  have  started 
an  unending  succession  of  benefits ;  you  have  learned  in 
teaching;  those  you  teach  will  teach  again;  and  so  on, 
in  ever  widening  circles  of  good.  Mr.  Emerson  says: 
''If  a  man  give  me  aught,  he  has  done  me  a  low  benefit; 
if  he  enable  me  to  do  aught  of  myself,  he  has  done  me  a  high 
benefit. ''  Then  teach,  teach,  teach.  Teach  some  one 
to  do  something  of  himself,  to  return  to  the  community  at 
least  as  much  as  he  receives  from  the  community. 

I  cannot  speak  more  strongly  than  I  feel  on  this  subject 
of  the  evils  of  rehef,  for  I  beheve  that  among  the  many 
causes  of  poverty  one  of  the  most  potent  is  careless  relief- 
giving,  whether  by  what  are  called  charitable  societies, 
by  private  individuals,  or  from  public  funds.  I  believe 
that  no  society  should  exist  for  the  purpose  of  giving  relief ; 
I  believe  that  no  money  should  be  collected  and  kept  on 
hand  for  that  purpose ;  but  that  societies  should  be  formed 
to  help,  and  that  when  material  aid  proves  to  be  needed 
in  any  special  case,  special  requests  should  be  made 
for  it.     Being  convinced  that  all  material  aid  is  bad,  even 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     217 

when  it  must  be  given,  I  think  that  the  giving  of  it  ought 
to  be  made  as  difficult  as  possible ;  and  I  also  think  that  if 
there  were  no  relief  funds  to  stand  as  a  constant  tempta- 
tion to  poor  people,  and  if  the  giving  of  relief  were  nobody^s 
business,  and  a  very  special  effort  had  to  be  made  whenever 
it  was  found  to  be  required,  many  kind  people  would  be 
surprised  and  delighted  to  find  how  very  seldom  any 
reUef  at  all  was  needed. 

To  sum  up  :  the  principles  which  I  have  tried  to  make 
clear  in  the  foregoing  pages  are  :  first,  that  we  must  help 
people ;  second,  that  in  order  to  help  them  we  must  find 
out  what  the  matter  is ;  third,  that  in  trying  to  help  we 
must  beware  of  doing  harm;  fourth,  that  we  must  take 
thought  and  trouble  to  help  them ;  fifth,  that  no  help  is 
real  which  does  not  develop  the  character  and  make  the 
person  helped  more  able  to  take  care  of  himself;  and, 
finally,  that  the  distinction  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  that 
between  the  body  and  the  soul.  If  we  help  the  body  only, 
our  help  is  worth  nothing ;  like  the  body  itself,  it  perishes 
daily  and  has  to  be  daily  renewed.  If  we  help  the  soul, 
if  we  teach  something,  our  help  is  eternal,  hke  the  soul, 
and  there  is  no  end  to  the  good  we  have  done. 

The  Uses  and  Dangers  of  Investigation  in  Public 
AND  Private  Charities^ 

The  uses  of  investigation  in  the  work  of  charity  are 
obvious.     The  first  is  so  obvious  that  it  seems  almost  need- 

1  Read  before  the  New  York  Medical  League  at  its  meeting  at  the 
Academy  of  Medicine,  January  20,  1899.  Published  in  the  Medical 
NewSj  February  4  of  that  year. 


218  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

less  to  mention  it,  especially  to  an  audience  of  medical 
men.  It  would  be  as  reasonable  to  ask  what  is  the  use 
of  a  diagnosis,  as  what  is  the  use  of  an  investigation. 
The  use  is  to  find  out  what  is  the  matter,  because  if  we  do 
not  know,  we  cannot  do  any  good  at  all.  There  is  always 
a  cause  for  the  distress  of  those  who  come  asking  for  help, 
and  we  cannot  really  help  them,  unless  we  know  what  the 
cause  is  and  at  least  try  to  remove  it.  And  yet  there  are 
many  people  who  are  benevolent  and  who  want  to  help, 
but  who  go  on  blindly  without  getting  any  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  actual  condition  of  those  who  come  to 
them.  To  take  the  commonest  and  perhaps  the  most 
natural  form  of  this  error  as  an  example  —  many  benevo- 
lent people  know  only  the  women  of  the  families  they 
are  trying  to  help.  They  want  to  elevate  their  physical 
and  moral  condition,  but  how  can  they  elevate  them 
if  they  are  only  brought  in  contact  with  one  half  of  each 
family,  leaving  out  of  account  the  person  whose  duty  it  is 
to  do  for  his  wife  and  children  what  they  are  undertaking 
to  do  for  them  ?  How  do  they  know  that  the  husband 
of  the  woman  they  are  supporting  is  not  at  work  ?  How 
do  they  know  that  he  is  not  spending  all  he  can  earn,  and 
all  he  ought  to  devote  to  his  family,  at  the  corner  grog 
shop  ?  How  do  they  really  know  anything  of  the  family, 
if  they  ignore  the  existence  of  the  head  of  it,  of  the  man 
responsible  before  God  and  man  for  its  well-being? 

The  second  use  of  investigation  is  that  it  prevents  the 
growth  of  great  moral  evils,  for  its  absence  tends  to  the 
speedy  demoralization  of  decent  people.  What  I  mean 
will  be  perfectly  clear  to  you  if  you  will  consider  what 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY      219 

a  terrible  temptation  is  presented  to  unhappy  people  in 
distress,  if  they  can  go  round  from  church  to  church, 
from  person  to  person,  repeating  a  story  of  misery  and 
distress,  obtaining  from  each  twenty-five  cents,  fifty  cents, 
or  a  dollar,  and  sure  that  not  one  of  them  will  ever  make 
any  real  inquiry  into  the  facts,  sure  that  none  of  them  will 
ever  know  that  the  others  are  giving  also.  Let  me  give  an 
illustration.  A  decent  but  improvident  man  dies  and 
is  buried  by  his  club,  or  his  friends,  or  by  charity,  and 
the  newly  made  widow  is  left  with  a  number  of  young 
children  dependent  upon  her  for  support  and  care.  She 
must  act  the  part  of  both  father  and  mother,  and  her  state 
is  pitiful  indeed.  She  has  no  relations,  and  she  turns  to 
the  members  of  her  church.  She  touches  the  sympathy 
of  those  she  applies  to,  but  no  one  feels  any  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, no  one  feels  obhged  to  make  an  investigation, 
no  one  recognizes  the  great  danger  with  which  the  woman 
and  her  children  are  confronted,  the  danger  of  becoming  de- 
graded and  corrupted  into  beggars  and  liars,  and  so  every 
one  does  just  enough  to  quiet  his  own  sense  of  pity,  gives 
a  dollar,  or  five,  or  ten  according  to  the  more  or  less  touch- 
ing nature  of  the  woman's  story, — and  then  dismisses  it  from 
his  mind.  The  poor  woman,  truly  in  distress,  finds  that 
the  recital  of  her  sufferings  brings  in  a  sum  of  money  which 
ten  days  of  hard  work  would  not  earn,  and  most  naturally 
she  is  content,  when  the  proceeds  of  her  first  appeal  are 
spent,  to  make  another.  Why  should  she  not  ?  It  would 
be  stupid  to  seek  for  washing  or  scrubbing  at  a  dollar  and  a 
half  a  day,  when  she  can  get  five  or  ten  dollars  in  an  hour  by 
telling  the  truth  to  two  or  three  kind-hearted  people.    She 


220  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

finds,  however,  that  as  the  truth  becomes  less  sad,  as  her 
loss  affects  her  less  and  the  urgency  of  her  appeal  is  dimin- 
ished, the  proceeds  are  diminished  also ;  therefore  she  does 
not  confine  herself  to  the  truth.  She  colors  and  exagger- 
ates ;  she  takes  one  or  two  of  her  children  with  her  to  help 
her  emphasize  the  story ;  she  teaches  them  to  cheat  and  to 
lie,  and  she  finds  it  pays ;  and  thus  she  is  tempted  into  a  life 
of  deceit,  and  her  children  follow  in  her  path ;  and  it  is  the 
neglect  and  carelessness  of  benevolent  people  who  will  not 
take  the  trouble  to  find  out  the  real  condition  of  the  family, 
and  to  make  and  carry  out  a  plan  by  which  they  can  be 
rendered  self-supporting,  that  bring  them  to  this  horrible 
condition. 

But  investigation  is  of  use  not  only  in  preventing  the 
demoralization  of  decent  people,  but  in  the  detection  of 
those  who  have  become  expert  deceivers,  and  this  is 
important  because  it  too  has  a  bearing  on  public  morals. 
It  would  certainly  not  be  worth  while  to  take  any  trouble 
to  save  the  sums  which  rich  people  waste  on  ill-considered 
alms ;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  take  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
to  save  the  poor  from  the  temptations  which  beset  them 
when  they  see  the  rewards  reaped  by  successful  knavery. 
It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  piu-sue  impostors  and 
punish  frauds,  were  the  only  advantage  gained  the  saving 
of  money  to  extravagant  and  selfish  people;  but  it  is 
worth  while  to  prove  that  lying  and  cheating  are  not  an 
easier  and  pleasanter  way  to  get  a  livelihood  than  working. 

Let  me  sum  up,  then,  the  uses  of  investigation  I  have 
named.  First :  Investigation  is  the  only  means  of  learn- 
ing how  really  to  help  those  in  distress.    Second :  It 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     221 

prevents  the  demoralization  of  decent  people  by  remov- 
ing the  temptations  to  beggary.  Third  :  By  the  discovery 
of  fraud,  investigation  makes  a  life  of  deceit  less  attractive. 

But  to  offset  these  uses,  I  must  now  turn  to  the  dangers 
of  investigation,  for  it  is  a  dangerous  tool,  which  may 
wound  cruelly  if  used  without  thought  and  care.  .  .  . 
[Here  Mrs.  Lowell  referred  to  the  painful  experiences  of 
the  winter  of  1893-1894  in  terms  similar  to  those  used  ia  the 
preceding  paper,  and  continued.]  .  .  .  Everything  that  is 
said  against  investigation  by  its  critics  is  true,  and  no  one 
feels  the  truth  of  it  more  strongly  than  we  who  beUeve  in  its 
necessity.  We  know  that  it  is  a  necessary  evil,  and  we  try 
to  make  it  as  httle  evil  as  we  can,  and  we  justify  it,  as  I  have 
said,  only  because  it  is  the  preliminary  to  the  real  work  of 
helping  those  in  distress  by  careful,  conscientious,  patient, 
painstaking,  personal  work,  just  as  the  torture  of  a  sick 
man  by  the  physician^s  examination  can  be  justified  only  for 
the  same  reason,  that  he  has  to  know  what  the  matter  is 
before  he  can  take  one  step  in  trjdng  to  cure  the  man. 

The  necessary  invasion  of  the  privacy  of  the  Uves  of 
other  men^  and  women  is  one  of  the  great  evils  of  in- 
vestigation; it  is  a  sort  of  outrage  upon  the  dignity 
of  a  human  soul,  and  ought  not  to  be  undertaken  if  the 
object  of  the  investigation  is  not  a  nobler  one  than  the 
mere  feeding  of  the  body,  for  the  soul  should  not  be 
sacrificed  to  the  body.  '^What  will  it  profit  a  man,  if  he 
gain  the  whole  world,  and  lose  his  own  soul?" 

In  all  such  work  the  best  rule  is  to  ''do  unto  others  as  ye 
would  they  should  do  unto  you,"  and  to  try  to  realize  what 
would  be  the  effect  on  one^s  self  of  the  contemplated  action, 


222  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  also  to  remember  that,  the  object  being  to  help,  one 
must  do  as  little  harm  as  possible  in  the  process  of  helping. 

The  thorough  investigation  and  study  of  the  character 
and  needs  of  persons  who  ask  for  help,  and  the  attempt  to 
educate  and  develop  them,  even  by  means  which  may  not 
be  very  pleasant  to  them,  is  sometimes  called  the  new 
charity ;  but  it  seems  to  me  it  is  only  obedience  to  the  old 
teaching  I  have  already  quoted.  For,  after  all,  would 
we  not  each  one  of  us  prefer  to  be  dealt  with,  were  we  in 
the  place  of  an  applicant  for  relief,  in  such  a  manner  as 
would  elevate  us  morally  and  physically?  Would  any 
one  of  us  deliberately  choose  such  treatment  from  another 
as  would  undermine  our  moral  strength  and  power,  even 
though  it  should  save  us  from  suffering  ? 

Does  not  God  deal  with  us  in  what  we  choose  to  call 
the  new  way  ?  Are  we  not  driven  by  necessity  to  exert 
ourselves  ?  Do  we  not  suffer  the  results  of  our  own  acts  ? 
Can  we  by  any  means  escape  from  the  consequences  of  our 
sins  and  mistakes?  And  is  not  the  common  way  of 
relief-giving  and  what  we  call  charity  so  far  as  possible 
an  interference  with  God's  education  of  his  people  ?  We 
relieve  men  and  women  of  the  necessity  of  working,  we 
reward  them  for  idleness,  we  encourage  them  in  vice,  we 
take  their  children  from  them  when  they  are  young  and 
troublesome  and  care  for  them  in  institutions,  and  when 
they  are  old  enough  to  labor,  we  give  them  back  to  those 
who  claim  a  parent's  rights,  although  they  never  dis- 
charged a  parent's  duties.  We  tempt  our  poor  weak 
brothers  and  sisters  to  give  up  the  struggle  which  has  been 
appointed  to  make  them  strong  and  brave.    We  accept 


THE  CHARITY   ORGANIZATION   SOCIETY      223 

every  invention  they  use  to  work  upon  our  feelings ;  we 
lead  them  to  lie  to  us  and  become  cheats. 

Emergency  Relief  Funds  » 

To  the  Editor  of  Charities  : 

Sir:  — 
Will  you  give  space  to  the  accompanying  statement 
in  regard  to  the  suffering  caused  by  the  severe  cold  and 
storms  of  February,  and  by  the  efforts  to  relieve  it  ? 

We  take  the  liberty  of  addressing  your  readers  upon 
this  subject,  because  we  have  all  of  us  had  opportunities 
of  knowing  a  good  deal  about  the  facts,  and  we  believe 
that  the  efforts  to  relieve  the  distress  will  result  in  creating 
much  more  distress ;  and  although  it  is  too  late  now  to 
avoid  the  evils  we  deprecate,  we  hope  that  a  repetition 
of  the  conduct  leading  to  them  may  be  prevented,  when 
it  is  understood  that  the  consequences  are  cruel  to  those 
whom  it  was  intended  to  help.  Our  prayer  to  the  chari- 
tably disposed  is  that,  whether  in  times  of  supposed  emer- 
gency, or  from  day  to  day,  they  will,  in  the  words  of  Miss 
Octavia  Hill,  of  London,  not  rest  content  with  benevolent 
feelings,  but  assure  themselves  that  their  actions  are 
beneficent  as  well. 

The  special  lesson  to  be  gathered  from  the  lavish  gener- 
osity with  which  money  has  been  poured  out  to  meet  the 
present  emergency  is  that  sympathy  ought  to  be  con- 
tinuous, and  that  the  money  which  can  be  spared  so  readily 
should  be  given  year  by  year  to  the  hundreds  of  societies 
which  are  always  working  to  prevent,  as  well  as  to  relieve, 
the  suffering  of  the  poorer  part  of  the  population  of  the  city. 

Money  is  always  necessary,  not  only  for  relief,  but  for 
the  education  of  the  rising  generation,  to  develop  their 
character  and  their  powers,  so  that  they  will  not  have  to 

1  Published  in  Charities  of  February  25,  1899. 


224  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

turn  to  strangers  for  help,  even  in  much  more  serious 
emergencies  than  that  of  the  past  week. 

But  far  more  than  money,  men  and  women  are  necessary 
who  will  give  time  and  thought  to  the  constant  daily  needs, 
material  and  spiritual,  of  that  part  of  the  population  upon 
whom  the  burden  of  life  rests  very  heavily,  because  they 
have  not  the  strength  and  ability  to  carry  it. 

That  the  very  extraordinary  weather  we  have  had 
should  have  caused  much  suffering  of  various  kinds  was 
inevitable.  All  men  whose  business  required  them  to 
face  the  severe  cold,  policemen,  motormen,  cab  drivers, 
firemen,  etc.,  must  have  suffered  intensely,  and  in  many 
cases  their  health  may  have  been  permanently  injured 
by  exposure.  No  sympathy  for  them  and  no  effort  to 
mitigate  their  sufferings  could  have  been  misplaced  or 
mistaken,  or  would  have  been  likely  to  injure  them. 
That  men,  women  and  children  who  did  not  have  to  leave 
their  houses  suffered,  too,  must  also  be  true,  but  so  long 
as  they  kept  under  shelter  and  were  provided  with  some 
food  and  fuel,  their  distress  was  not,  as  a  rule,  extreme. 
Among  the  things  to  be  dreaded  for  the  poorest  people 
among  us,  whose  clothing  was  necessarily  not  a  sufficient 
protection  against  the  cold  and  snow  and  wet,  was  lest 
they  should  be  tempted  out  of  the  houses  and  expose  them- 
selves to  the  inclement  weather. 

Until  last  Monday  this  was  avoided.  The  visitors  and 
agents  of  the  charitable  societies  bravely  faced  the  cold 
themselves  to  carry  help  to  the  people  whom  they  feared 
might  be  in  need ;  but  they  found  no  exceptional  distress. 
Indeed,  it  is  usually  found  that  people  in  the  tenement 
houses  are  not  allowed  by  their  neighbors  to  suffer,  for 
those  who  have  food  and  fuel  share  it  with  those  who 
have  none,  especially  when  such  emergencies  arise  as  we 
have  just  experienced ;  and  many  of  the  landlords  and 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     225 

small  shopkeepers  are  also  most  charitable.  Until  Mon- 
day, then,  this  natural  sympathy  and  neighborly  kindness, 
supplemented  by  the  usual  efforts  of  churches  and  chari- 
table societies,  sufficed  to  meet  whatever  special  need  there 
was.  The  heavy  snowstorm  following  upon  the  severe 
cold,  however,  appealed  forcibly  to  the  sympathy  and 
imagination  of  persons  not  themselves  acquainted  with  the 
unending  charity  of  poor  people  for  each  other,  and  large 
sums  of  money  were  deposited  here  and  there  to  furnish 
reUef,  and  the  fact  was  widely  advertised. 

The  natural  consequences  have  followed.  Poor  people, 
especially  women  and  children,  though  ill-prepared  to  face 
either  the  snow  or  the  rain,  were  attracted  by  the  news- 
paper accounts  of  large  sums  to  be  spent  in  charity, 
and  have  for  the  past  four  days  been  tramping  through 
the  snow,  the  rain  and  the  slush,  and  standing  or  sitting 
for  hours  in  the  places  where  they  have  been  told  they 
would  get  orders  for  food  and  fuel.  The  consequence 
must  be  great  suffering,  and  probably  illness  and  death 
in  not  a  few  instances.  Of  course  it  is  natural  to  argue 
that  those  who  did  not  need  relief  very  badly  would  not 
go  to  seek  it  through  such  difficulties ;  but  we  are  sure  that 
if  they  did  need  it,  they  would  have  got  it,  either  from  their 
neighbors  or  from  others  who  knew  them  and  their  needs, 
had  they  been  left  at  home  to  receive  it  from  what  may 
be  called  their  natural  sources  of  help.  Take,  for  instance, 
two  of  the  individual  cases  which  we  have  observed. 
On  Monday  morning  in  the  snowstorm  a  woman  walked 
from  Fifty-ninth  Street  to  Twenty-second  Street  to  ask 
for  help,  spending  from  two  to  three  hours  in  the  journey, 
because,  as  she  said,  she  had  seen  in  the  paper  that  they 
were  giving  relief  there.  She  knew  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society  office  at  Sixty-third  Street,  and  would  un- 
doubtedly have  gone  there  for  help,  and  have  received  it 


226  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

there,  had  she  not  unfortunately  seen  this  statement  in 
the  paper.  On  Wednesday  an  old  woman,  who,  with  her 
daughter  and  grandchildren,  has  been  for  years  under  the 
care  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  committee,  the 
office  of  which  is  in  Broome  Street,  and  who  constantly 
comes  to  the  Society  when  they  need  anything,  walked  from 
Water  Street  to  Twenty-sixth  Street  to  get  a  coal  ticket. 
The  agent  of  the  society,  calling  on  her  Thursday,  found 
the  family  with  the  coal  ticket,  but  without  coal  or  food, 
and  in  five  minutes  provided  them  with  both,  as  she  would 
have  done  the  day  before  had  the  woman  come,  as  she 
usually  does,  to  the  office,  instead  of  walking  three  miles 
in  a  vain  search  for  help.  When  asked  why  she  had  not 
come,  she  answered:  ''You  have  done  so  much  for  us  I 
did  not  like  to,  and  I  saw  this  in  the  paper.'' 

Our  contention  is  that  it  is  cruel  to  tempt  poor  people 
by  offers  of  help  to  leave  their  homes  to  seek  it  and  that 
what  is  needed,  beyond  what  their  own  relations,  friends 
and  neighbors  can  supply,  should  be  taken  to  them  quietly, 
and  even  secretly,  if  possible,  by  those  who  know  them 
well.  That  these  people  who  are  now  seeking  relief  all 
over  the  city  have  not  been  without  food  and  fuel,  as  has 
been  claimed,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  they  are  able  to  go 
on  these  long  journeys  through  the  slush  and  to  stand 
for  hours  waiting  in  line  with  the  hope  of  getting  a  little 
coal ;  for  if  they  had  been  frozen  and  starved  for  a  week, 
they  would  not  have  strength  to  bear  the  ordeal  to  which 
the  charity  of  the  benevolent  is  now  subjecting  them. 

As  to  the  statement  that  there  were  numbers  of  persons 
homeless  in  the  city  during  the  storm,  the  mere  fact  that 
there  were  none  found  frozen,  except  men  who  were  kept 
outdoors  as  watchmen,  shows  that  the  statement  was  with- 
out foundation.  That  men  flock  to  any  free  shelter  opened 
is  no  proof  of  actual  homelessness,  for  there  are  from 


THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY     227 

10,000  to  15,000  men  sleeping  nightly  in  cheap  lodging- 
houses  in  this  city,  and  a  few  thousands  of  these  can  be 
drawn  at  any  time  into  a  free  shelter,  especially  if  food 
is  provided  also. 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  also,  that  during  and  after 
a  snowstorm,  these  men  are  better  able  than  at  any  other 
time  to  pay  for  their  lodgings,  owing  to  the  work  supplied 
by  the  snow  itself,  and  that  the  opening  of  new  free  shelters 
is  especially  unnecessary  at  such  times. 

We  protest  against  the  undeserved  shame  brought  upon 
our  city  by  the  false  impression  given  to  the  world  that 
it  is  full  of  starving,  homeless  people. 

We  do  not  say  that  there  was  no  additional  suffering 
owing  to  the  storm,  nor  that  all  the  suffering  there  was 
would  have  been  relieved ;  but  we  do  say  that  the  forming 
of  emergency  funds  and  the  advertising  of  them  have 
increased  it  rather  than  diminished  it. 

Finally,  we  must  repeat  that  the  true  way  to  make  sure 
that  people  will  not  suffer  when  an  emergency  arises  is  to 
strengthen  the  societies  which  are  constantly  busied  in 
trying  to  help  them,  by  providing  these  societies  with 
plenty  of  money  and  with  plenty  of  workers  who  will  learn 
to  know  the  individuals,  and  so  be  able  to  succor  them 
effectively  whenever  they  need  help,  whether  the  emer- 
gency is  one  which  strikes  only  the  single  family,  or  one 
which  reaches  the  whole  population  of  the  city. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell, 
3d  Dist.  C.O.S.  Com. 

Lillian  D.  Wald, 

Nurses^  Settlement. 

Elizabeth  S.  Williams, 

College  Settlement. 
February'  18,  1899. 


CHAPTER  X 

Improved  Care  for  the  Insane 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
which  Mrs.  Lowell  attended,  held  June  8,  1876,  Com- 
missioner Theodore  Roosevelt  having  called  attention 
to  inadequate  accommodations  for  the  insane  w^omen  in 
the  asylums  of  New  York  City,  the  subject  was  by  reso- 
lution referred  to  the  New  York  members  of  the  Board, 
with  request  to  call  the  attention  of  the  proper  authorities 
to  the  conditions  found.  This  received  the  prompt  con- 
sideration of  the  Commissioners,  who,  under  date  of 
October  20,  1877,  in  a  conmaunication  to  the  Mayor  of 
New  York  in  regard  to  the  official  charities  of  the  city, 
protested  against  the  insufficiency  of  the  estimate  of  the 
Department  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction  for  the 
year  1878.  This  communication,  evidently  written  b}'' 
Mrs.  Lowell,  calls  the  Mayor^s  attention  in  turn  to  the 
condition  of  the  city^s  hospitals,  asylums,  and  other 
charitable  institutions,  and  asserts  that  they  —  the  State 
Commissioners — ^'had  frequently  pressed  upon  the  at- 
tention of  the  (City)  Conmiissioners  the  dangerously  over- 
crowded condition  of  the  Lunatic  Asylum  on  BlackwelFs 
Island,  and  had  anticipated  from  them  a  request  to  the 
Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  for  an  appropria- 
tion to  buy  a  farm  upon  which  inexpensive  buildings  for 

228 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         229 

the  chronic  insane  could  be  erected,  but  of  this  do  mention 
is  made  in  their  estimate." 

Two  months  later,  December  24,  1877,  Mrs.  Lowell 
and  Mr.  Donnelly  addressed  another  letter  to  the  Board 
of  Estimate  and  Apportionment,  in  which  they  made  ''one 
more  appeal"  for  the  full  amount  of  the  appropriation 
asked  by  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Cor- 
rection, for  the  city  asylums  for  the  insane  on  Ward's 
and  Blackwell's  Islands  and  even  a  larger  appropriation 
for  salaries  than  the  Commissioners  themselves  requested. 
Attention  was  called  to  the  crowded  condition  of  the  wards, 
the  insufficient  number  of  physicians  and  attendants,  and 
the  suffering  incident  thereto,  both  for  attendants  and 
patients. 

This  communication  was  followed  by  another,  also 
addressed  to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment 
by  Commissioners  Roosevelt  and  Lowell,  under  date 
January  14,  1878.  After  furnishing  information  in  sup- 
port of  their  recommendation,  they  again  urged  the  Board 
to  ask  for  a  law  authorizing  the  City  of  New  York  to 
buy  land  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  an  insane  asylum 
outside  of  the  city.  In  the  minutes  of  the  State  Board 
of  Charities,  many  entries  show  Mrs.  Lowell's  continued 
activity  for  the  welfare  of  the  insane  throughout  the 
State  as  well  as  of  those  in  the  island  asylums  maintained 
by  the  City  of  New  York. 

It  is  refreshing  to  introduce  here  a  letter  from  Mrs. 
Lowell's  pen,  addressed  to  WiUiam  Pryor  Letchworth, 
at  that  time  the  President  of  the  State  Board  of  Char- 
ities : 


230  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

120  East  30th  Street, 

June  7th,  1880. 
Dear  Sir  : 

I  am  much  obliged  for  yours,  enclosing  a  letter  from 
Mr.  Ford,  President  of  the  Binghamton  Board  of  Trustees, 
and  I  am  sorry  I  cannot  attend  the  meeting  of  the  Execu- 
tive Committee.  The  spirit  of  Mr.  Ford^s  letter  is  gratify- 
ing, and  I  hope  the  Trustees  will  conform  to  it  in  future. 

So  far  as  suggestions  regarding  the  asylums  are  con- 
cerned, I  believe  I  have  but  one  to  which  I  wish  to  draw 
the  attention  of  the  Committee. 

I  was  surprised  and  very  sorry  to  see  that  Dr.  Mac- 
Donald,  in  his  report  to  the  Trustees,  recommended  an 
expenditure  for  grading  (and  beautifying  ?)  the  grounds  of 
the  Asylum.  Apart  from  all  questions  of  expense,  I  should 
have  expected  from  Dr.  MacDonald  an  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  all  such  work  would  afford  the  very  best 
means  of  employing  the  patients,  and  should  have  ex- 
pected him  to  value  it  accordingly,  and  to  defer  every  half 
hour's  labor  of  any  kind  which  might  be  done  by  patients, 
until  their  arrival.  If  the  grounds  of  the  institution  re- 
mained ten  years  in  a  rough  condition,  affording  occupa- 
tion to  a  number  of  patients,  it  would  be  no  matter  of 
regret,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  some  other  varieties  of 
work  might,  after  due  consideration,  be  also  found  for 
them  to  do.  .  .  . 

I  hope  this  matter  will  be  forcibly  presented  to  the  at- 
tention of  the  Trustees.  ... 

Respectfully  yours, 

J.  S.  Lowell,  Commissioner. 

Rumors  of  abuses  in  the  management  of  the  asylums 
for  the  insane  caused  the  Legislature  of  1880  to  appoint 
a  Senate  Committee  of  Investigation,  of  which  Senator 


IMPROVED   CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         231 

Woodin  was  Chairman.  This  Committee  made  a  tour 
of  inspection  of  the  asylums  maintained  by  the  City  of 
New  York  on  Blackwell's  and  Ward's  Islands,  and  on 
December  3,  held  a  public  hearing  at  which  Mrs.  Lowell 
spoke.  She  recommended  that  the  power  of  appoint- 
ment and  removal  of  subordinates  should  be  given  to  the 
superintendents,  condemned  pohtical  interference  with 
management,  recommended  increased  salaries,  and  called 
attention  to  the  overcrowding  of  the  institutions,  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  island  sites,  and  the  need  for  more  hospital 
accommodation  elsewhere.  At  the  close  of  her  address 
the  Chairman  remarked  that  she  had  made  some  of  the 
most  valuable  suggestions  the  Committee  had  received. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board,  held  January  15,  1881, 
Mrs.  Lowell  presented  a  ''Report  upon  the  Condition 
and  Needs  of  the  Insane  of  New  York  City,"  which  was 
accepted  and  ordered  transmitted  to  the  Legislature  with 
the  annual  report  of  the  Board.  Extracts  from  this  report 
are  included  in  this  chapter. 

About  this  time  Mrs.  Lowell  effected  a  most  important 
and  far-reaching  reform,  in  the  early  care  and  observation 
of  the  alleged  insane.  Bellevue  Hospital  had  long  re- 
ceived persons  who,  from  intemperance  or  a  sudden  out- 
break of  insanity,  had  become  disturbers  of  their  homes  or 
the  public  peace.  In  these  emergencies  patients  were 
committed  indiscriminatelj^  to  what  were  known  as  the 
''Cells,"  a  series  of  dark,  ill- ventilated  rooms  in  the  base- 
ment, where  they  often  remained  for  several  days,  poorly 
fed  and  unable  to  sleep,  owing  to  the  disturbance  created 
by   the  insane  and  drunkards  suffering  from  delirium 


232  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

tremens.  Mrs.  Lowell  appealed  to  the  Commissioners 
of  Charity  to  erect  a  small  pavilion  on  the  grounds,  to 
which  patients  suspected  of  insanity  should  be  committed, 
where  they  would  be  under  the  immediate  observation  of 
members  of  the  medical  staff.  The  Commissioners  finally 
consented  to  erect  such  a  building,  provided  the  necessary 
appropriation  of  $10,000  was  secured.  A  committee  was 
formed,  consisting  of  Dr.  Stephen  Smith  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  Dr.  James  R.  Wood  of  the  Medical 
Board  of  Bellevue  Hospital,  and  Bishop  Henry  C.  Potter 
of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  to  attend  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  and 
present  the  matter.  The  appropriation  was  made,  the 
pavilion  built,  and  a  well-organized  service  created,  con- 
sisting of  a  special  physician  from  the  medical  staff  of  the 
hospital  and  nurses  from  the  Training  School.  Commis- 
sioners in  Lunacy  daily  visited  the  institution,  examined 
each  patient,  and  discharged  to  the  street  those  found  not 
to  be  insane,  and  to  the  asylum  for  the  insane  those  found 
to  be  insane.  The  number  of  persons  committed  as  insane 
to  this  pavilion,  but  who  were  found,  on  careful  observa- 
tion by  expert  physicians,  to  be  not  insane,  has  been  in- 
credible. The  success  of  this  innovation  has  had  much 
to  do  with  the  establishment  of  observation  wards  and 
psychopathic  buildings  in  connection  with  hospitals  and 
asylums  for  the  insane. 

Some  idea  of  the  painstaking  performance  by  Mrs. 
Lowell  of  her  official  duties  may  be  gathered  from  the 
following  paragraph  from  a  letter  of  hers  written  that  year 
to  her  sister-in-law : 


IMPROVED   CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         233 

West  New  Brighton, 

February  6,  1881. 
Dear  Annie  : 

...  I  am  all  in  a  whirl  of  business,  present  and  to 
come.  Last  week  I  finished  off  our  report  on  New  York 
City  Charities,  which,  although  it  does  not  look  like  it, 
has  kept  me  busy  for  six  months,  and  it  went  to  the 
Legislature  on  Thursday.  Then  I  had  to  take  up  a  case  of 
abuse  of  a  patient  at  the  Lunatic  Asylum,  and  on  Wed- 
nesday (mercury  at  zero)  I  and  a  lady  stenographer  went 
over  to  Blackwell's  Island,  where  I  examined  four  attend- 
ants who  were  a  good  deal  frightened.  ...  Of  course 
I  did  not  learn  much,  but  it  will  have  a  salutary  effect  and 
make  them  see  that  such  things  will  not  be  overlooked. 
I  am  also  busy  about  the  Women's  Reformatory  Bill  and 
petitions  in  favor  of  it ;  and  altogether,  as  usual,  I  should 
like  to  be  fifty  people,  and  could  lead  fifty  very  pleasant 
lives !  Did  I  tell  you  that  Father  had  organized  a  Rich- 
mond County  Society  for  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Chil- 
dren? It  grew  out  of  Mother's  industrial  school  work, 
and  will  be  very  useful.  The  school  goes  on  beautifully, 
eighteen  or  twenty  children  to  dinner  daily,  and  all  learn- 
ing to  be  clean  and  decent  and  helpful. 

Mrs.  Ix)weirs  vigilance  in  regard  to  legislation  for  the 
care  of  the  insane  was  shown  in  the  following  letter  ad- 
dressed to  the  President  of  the  State  Board  : 

120  East  30th  Street, 

March  14th,  1881. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

There  is  a  French  pamphlet  for  you  here.  May  I  keep 
it  to  read  before  forwarding  it? 

I  do  not  know  whether  you  have  recognized  the  danger 


234  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  there  is  in  a  bill  introduced  by  Senator  Bixby  and 
Mr.  Browning  granting  to  the  Commissioners  of  Charities 
and  Correction  of  New  York  City  permission  to  transfer 
insane  patients  to  State  and  county  lunatic  asylums. 

The  danger  lies  in  the  words  I  have  underlined,  and 
county  (the  rest  is  all  right),  for  although  the  bill  qualified 
this  authority  by  saying  that  the  county  asylums  must 
be  duly  licensed  by  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  what 
I  fear  is  that  an  agreement  might  be  entered  into  by  the 
Commissioners  of  Charities  and  Correction  with  some 
asylums  now  taking  500  New  York  patients  at  $2.50  each 
week  —  putting  up  cheap  buildings  and  then  keeping 
the  patients  in  poorhouse  style,  and  we  might  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  prevent  it. 

Please  explain  the  matter  to  Senators  and  Assemblymen, 
as  at  first  sight  the  bill  is  all  right.  It  will  be  necessary 
to  act  at  once  —  the  bill  has  passed  both  Houses  and  only 
needs  to  have  some  slight  Assembly  amendment  concurred 
in  by  the  Senate.     I  spoke  to  Senator  Bixby  about  it. 

Truly  yours, 

J.  S.  Lowell. 

June  17,  1881,  was  a  red  letter  day  for  the  State  Board 
of  Charities,  for  on  that  date  Governor  Cornell  appointed 
Dr.  Stephen  Smith  of  New  York  City,  Commissioner  from 
the  First  Judicial  District,  and  he  was  thus  introduced 
to  a  public  service  with  which  he  has  been  prominently 
identified  nearly  ever  since,  now  for  a  period  of  almost 
thirty  years.  After  a  brief  first  term  on  the  State  Board, 
Dr.  Smith  was  appointed  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy, 
May  21, 1882,  and  resigned  his  seat  on  the  Board  to  accept 
that  position. 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         235 

Being  familiar  with  the  origin  of  his  office  in  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  and  recognizing  the  intimate  relation 
of  his  duties  to  those  of  the  Board,  Dr.  Smith,  reversing 
the  poUcy  of  his  predecessor,  proposed  to  its  President 
that,  although  he  was  required  by  law  to  make  his  annual 
report  to  the  Legislature,  he  would  report  the  results  of  the 
current  work  of  his  office  to  the  Board  at  its  regular  meet- 
ings, if  the  members  approved.  Accordingly,  by  resolution, 
the  Commissioner  was  invited  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the 
Board  and  to  participate  in  the  discussion  of  subjects 
relating  to  the  insane.  Mrs.  Lowell  took  an  active  part 
in  securing  this  cooperation  of  the  two  branches  of  a  com- 
mon service,  and  while  she  remained  on  the  Board,  gave 
unfailing  support  to  the  Commissioner  in  his  efforts  to 
improve  the  care  of  the  insane. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board  October  11,  1881, 
Mrs.  Lowell  and  Dr.  Smith  were  appointed  a  committee 
to  report  upon  the  condition  of  the  asylums  for  the  insane 
in  New  York  County,  and  to  suggest  such  measures  for 
reform  as  in  their  opinion  would  improve  the  service. 
Mrs.  Lowell,  on  behalf  of  this  committee,  presented  at 
a  special  meeting  March  16,  1882  a  report  which  was 
printed  in  full  in  the  Board^s  minutes.  The  report  urges 
that  the  Board  prepare  a  bill : 

'^Providing  that  New  York  County,  together  with  Kings, 
Monroe  and  Genesee  Counties,  which  all  now  retain  their 
acute  insane,  should  be  required,  as  are  the  other  counties 
in  the  State,  to  place  their  acute  insane  in  State  hospitals. 
This  plan  has  the  advantage  of  placing  all  the  counties 
of  the  State  on  the  same  footing ;   it  would  simply  be 


236  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  consistent  carrying  out  of  the  poUcy  dehberately 
adopted  by  the  State,  that  it  is  for  the  pubhc  good  that 
the  acute  insane  should  be  cared  for  in  State  institu- 
tions. .  .  . 

''This  plan  is  undoubtedly  directly  in  line  of  the  past 
poUcy  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  and  there  are  no 
arguments  to  be  made  against  it  which  do  not  equally 
tell  against  the  whole  scheme  of  State  care  for  the  acute 
insane.  ...  It  is  acknowledged  by  all  experts  that 
the  care  of  recent  cases  of  insanity  to  be  efficient  must  be 
costly,  and  in  order  to  protect  the  insane  from  the  false 
economy  of  county  authorities.  State  hospitals  for  the 
insane  were  built  in  the  State  at  great  expense,  and  are  now 
ready  to  receive  all  the  recent  cases  which  occur.  Mean- 
while, the  two  most  powerful  of  the  counties  have  been 
enabled  to  retain  their  acute  insane,  not  because  they  have 
made  adequate  provision  for  them,  but  because  they  did 
not  choose  to  pay  for  their  care  the  amount  required  of  the 
smaller  counties. 

''Yoiu-  Committee  recommend  that  the  Board  adopt 
the  last  of  the  three  plans  submitted,  and  appoint  a 
Committee  to  draft  a  bill  to  be  presented  at  the  next 
meeting  of  the  Board." 

This  report  was  accepted  by  the  Board,  and  on  motion 
of  Commissiomer  Carpenter,  it  was : 

^'Resolved,  That  this  Board  deems  it  desirable  that  the 
proper  authorities  of  New  York  take  immediate  measures 
to  remove  the  acute  insane  from  institutions  of  that  county 
to  the  State  asylums  above  mentioned,  and  that  the  Com- 
missioners from  New  York  be  requested  to  bring  this 
subject  to  the  attention  of  the  proper  authorities  of  that 
city  and  coimty." 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         237 

At  the  January  meeting  of  the  Board  in  1882,  President 
Letch  worth  appointed  as  the  Standing  Committee  on 
the  Insane,  Commissioners  Smith,  Craig,  and  Lowell.  In 
May,  the  resignation  of  Dr.  Smith  created  a  vacancj'-  in 
the  Board,  which  to  my  sm*prise  I  was  appointed  to  fill. 
Some  unknown  friend  had  suggested  my  name  to  Governor 
Cornell,  whom  at  that  time  I  had  never  met,  and  thus 
began  a  service  which  still  occupies  much  of  my  time 
and  thought,  and  which  associated  me  with  Mrs.  Lowell 
in  her  work  as  a  Commissioner  of  the  State  Board.  Im- 
mediately upon  my  appointment,  I  was  much  pleased  by 
the  receipt  of  the  following  letter,  which  illustrates  the 
writer's  unfailing  courtesy  and  promptness : 

120  East  30th  Street, 

May  31,  1882. 
Dear  Sir  : 

I  see  that  the  Governor  has  nominated  you  as  a  member 
of  our  Board,  and  I  hope  the  nomination  will  be  confirmed. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  give  you  any  information  in  my 
power  in  regard  to  the  duties  of  the  office,  and  meanwhile 
I  enclose  the  Constitution,  etc.,  of  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society,  of  which  you  are  an  ex-officio  member,  and 
in  which  I  hope  you  may  take  an  interest. 

Truly  yours, 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

My  first  attendance  at  a  Board  meeting  was  on  July  11, 
1882,  when  by  resolution,  I  was  assigned  to  the  vacancies 
in  the  standing  committees,  occasioned  by  the  resignation 
of  Dr.  Smith.  I  thus  found  myself  in  the  anomalous 
position  of  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  the  Insane, 


238  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

never  yet  having  been  within  the  walls  of  an  asylum. 
Mrs.  Lowell  wished  me  to  familiarize  myself  at  once,  by 
personal  inspection,  with  the  condition  of  the  city  asylums 
on  the  islands,  and  when  my  first  visits  to  them  were 
made  in  her  company,  I  received  useful  object  lessons  of 
what  official  inspections  should  be.  Nothing  escaped  Mrs. 
Lowell's  watchful  eye,  and  it  was  immediately  evident 
that  she  was  held  in  great  respect  by  the  asyliun  officials. 
Nothing  disturbed  her  serenity  or  was  allowed  to  hasten 
or  to  retard  the  orderly  course  of  her  inspections.  On 
my  first  visit  in  her  company  to  the  insane  asylum  for 
men  on  Ward's  Island,  in  the  course  of  our  rounds  we 
came  to  a  ward  filled  to  overcrowding  with  a  class  of 
senile  dements,  many  of  them  suffering  from  paresis  in 
its  advanced  stages.  I  had  never  until  then  been  in  so 
repulsive  a  place.  The  sights  were  no  worse  than  the 
odors,  and  I  sought  fresh  air  at  an  open  window.  Mean- 
while, Mrs.  Lowell,  quite  immoved,  stood  with  the  Super- 
intendent in  the  middle  of  the  ward,  pencil  in  hand, 
making  notes  of  the  conditions  revealed  to  her  practised 
eye.  The  first  impression  of  her  perfect  courage  remained, 
and  was  strengthened  by  my  later  experience  of  the  con- 
duct of  her  work. 

Mrs.  Lowell  continued  to  call  attention  to  the  over- 
crowding in  the  asylums  of  New  York  City,  and  in  October, 
1882,  the  State  Board  of  Charities  adopted  a  resolution 
she  offered  directing  the  New  York  Commissioners  to 
present  the  facts  to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportion- 
ment. Meanwhile,  she  and  Dr.  Smith  endeavored  to  find 
a  suitable  site  on  Long  Island  for  a  farm  colony  for  the 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         239 

able-bodied  insane,  with  the  intention,  at  that  time,  of 
having  it  conducted  as  a  branch  of  the  insane  asylum  for 
men  on  Ward's  Island. 

At  the  close  of  the  year  1882,  the  New  York  Commis- 
sioners, with  the  approval  of  the  Board,  held  several 
conferences  with  the  City  Commissioners  of  PubUc 
Charities  and  Correction,  endeavoring,  but  without  success, 
to  secure  their  active  support  of  the  application  for  the 
farm,  and  in  December  twice  appeared  before  the  Board 
of  Estimate  and  Apportionment,  urging  an  appropriation 
for  this  purpose  of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars.  Mrs. 
Lowell  at  the  State  Board  meeting  of  January  11,  1883, 
presented  a  report  on  '^The  Insane  and  Lunatic  Asylums 
of  New  York  City,"  which  was  adopted  and  ordered 
transmitted  to  the  Legislature. 

In  April,  1883,  I  was,  at  my  request,  relieved  from 
further  service  on  the  Committee  on  the  Insane,  to  take 
up  reformatory  work,  which  more  particularly  interested 
me.  Mrs.  Lowell  also  retired  from  the  Committee  in  July 
of  that  year.  We  both  continued,  however,  as  State 
Commissioners  residing  in  the  city,  to  urge  the  improve- 
ment of  its  asylums,  and  to  exert  pressure  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  farm  colony  for  the  insane. 

It  was  not  easy  to  discourage  Mrs.  Lowell;  she  had 
learned  to  wait  perse veringly.  In  December,  1883,  the  fol- 
lowing resolution  which  she  offered  was  adopted  by  the 
State  Board  : 

^'Resolved,  That  the  New  York  Conamissioners  be  re- 
quested to  go  before  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportion- 
ment of  the  Citv  of  New  York  and  draw  their  attention 


240  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

to  the  fact  that  three  thousand  acres  of  land  in  Suffolk 
County,  suitable  for  a  farm  for  the  chronic  insane  of  the 
city,  are  now  for  sale  at  fifty  thousand  dollars,  and  to 
recommend  that  an  examination  of  the  land  be  made  with 
a  view  of  purchasing  it  for  the  purposes  above  named/' 

The  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  was  requested  to 
join  in  this  apphcation.  The  minutes  of  the  State  Board 
for  the  years  1884-1886  show  Mrs.  Lowell's  persistence  in 
calling  attention  to  the  needs  of  the  insane  in  the  State, 
and  especially  to  the  need  for  increased  accommodation  for 
the  insane  of  New  York  City,  and  for  the  establishment  of 
another  State  asylum  for  chronic  cases.  During  this 
period  the  Board  of  Estimate  made  an  appropriation  of 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  for  the  purchase  of  more 
land  for  the  insane. 

Mr.  Letchworth  in  1880  made  an  extensive  European 
tour  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  care  and  treatment  of 
the  feeble-minded  and  insane  on  the  Continent  and  in 
England,  as  the  result  of  which  he  subsequently  published 
an  important  work  which  has  since  been  regarded  as 
authoritative.  He  was  favorably  impressed  with  the 
colony  plan  of  treatment  given  at  Alt  Scherbitz,  near 
Leipzig  in  Saxony,  and  at  his  own  expense  had  plans  and 
drawings  of  the  colony  made  in  the  hope  of  procuring 
their  adoption  by  asylums  in  the  United  States.  These 
plans  Mr.  Letchworth  generously  placed  at  the  disposition 
of  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction 
of  New  York  City  through  Mrs.  Lowell  in  March  of  1886. 

In  July,  1887,  Mrs.  Lowell  informed  the  Board  that 
the  New   York   Conmiissioners   had  recently   appeared 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE  241 

before  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment,  and 
requested  the  transfer  of  sixty  thousand  dollars  for  the 
erection  of  buildings,  and  the  preparation  of  the  Long 
Island  Farm  for  inmates,  and  that  ten  thousand  dollars 
was  available.  At  the  October  meeting  of  that  year,  Hon. 
Henry  H.  Porter,  Commissioner  of  Pubhc  Charities  and 
Correction  of  the  City  of  New  York,  with  Dr.  A.  E.  Mac- 
Donald,  General  Superintendent  of  the  city  asylums  for  the 
insane,  appeared  before  the  State  Board  and  presented  a 
general  plan  for  the  erection  of  asylum  buildings,  for  the 
quiet  and  orderly  clironic  insane  of  the  city,  upon  the  land 
recently  acquired  by  it  near  Central  Islip,  Long  Island, 
which  after  discussion  was  approved  by  the  Board.  At 
the  next  meeting,  a  special  conamittee  was  appointed  to 
confer  with  the  Mayor  of  New  York  City,  and  in  their 
discretion,  to  act  with  him  to  secure  better  relief  in  the 
care  of  the  insane. 

The  conference  with  the  Mayor  was  attended  on  Decem- 
ber 22, 1887,  by  Conmiissioners  Craig,  Lowell,  and  Stewart. 
The  Mayor  expressed  his  appreciation  of  the  investiga- 
tions and  reports  the  State  Board  had  made,  and  an- 
nounced that  in  consequence,  the  Board  of  Estimate  and 
Apportionment  had  voted  to  the  Department  of  Public 
Charities  and  Correction  all  the  appropriations  it  had  asked 
for,  including  the  sum  for  the  farm  colony  for  the  insane  at 
Central  Islip.  In  October,  1888,  pursuant  to  a  resolution 
adopted  by  the  State  Board,  at  its  meeting  that  month. 
Commissioners  Milhau  and  Lowell  had  a  conference  with 
the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction,  and 
also  appeared  before  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportion- 


242  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ment.  They  presented  resolutions  adopted  by  the  State 
Board,  advocating  the  erection  on  the  farm  at  Central  Islip 
of  two  or  three  more  colonies  for  men,  and  increased  accom- 
modation for  women  at  Hart's  Island,  and  this  they  re- 
ported to  the  Board  at  the  November  meeting.  Twelve 
years  had  elapsed  since  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mrs.  Lowell 
began  to  urge  upon  the  authorities  of  New  York  Citj^  the 
necessity  of  a  farm  colony  for  the  chronic  insane,  when 
in  May,  1889,  the  doors  of  the  Central  Islip  Asylum  were 
opened  for  the  reception  of  patients. 

Meanwhile,  the  abuses,  inadequacy,  and  lack  of  system 
of  county  care  had  become  so  apparent  to  thoughtful 
persons  interested  in  the  care  of  the  insane,  that  under  the 
wise  and  energetic  leadership  of  Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler, 
the  State  assumed  in  1889  the  guardianship  of  all  the  in- 
digent insane,  by  what  is  now  commonly  called  the 
State  Care  Act.  By  this  statute  the  State  Commission  in 
Lunacy  was  established,  to  consist  of  three  persons,  one  a 
physician,  one  a  lawyer  and  the  other  a  citizen,  and  the 
office  of  State  Conunissioner  of  Lunacy  was  abolished. 
This  law  became  effective  with  the  approval  of  the  Gover- 
nor May  14,  and  his  appointees.  Dr.  Carlos  F.  MacDonald, 
Goodwin  Brown,  and  Henry  A.  Reeves  organized  under 
the  chairmanship  of  Dr.  MacDonald,  on  June  5.  Dr. 
Stephen  Smith,  who  served  as  State  Commissioner  of 
Lunacy  until  May  9,  1888,  being  then  superseded  by 
Dr.  Samuel  Wesley  Smith,  was  reappointed  to  the  State 
Board  of  Charities  in  1893,  and  elected  Vice-President  of 
the  Board  in  1903,  a  position  which,  although  now  in 
his  eighty-eighth  year,  he  still  fills  with  energy  and  dis- 
tinguished abihty. 


IMPROVED  CARE  FOR  THE  INSANE         243 

The  State  Commissioners  in  Lunacy  had  under  super- 
vision April  1,  1910,  nearly  thirty  thousand  indigent  in- 
sane, maintained  in  fifteen  State  hospitals,  of  which  two 
are  for  the  criminal  insane.  The  State  Hospital  at  Central 
IsUp,  Long  Island,  in  the  establishment  of  which  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  so  influential,  then  cared  for  in  comfort  on  a 
farm  site  of  one  thousand  acres,  beautified  and  made  fer- 
tile by  their  labor,  more  than  four  thousand  men,  and  has 
proved  an  inestimable  blessing  to  the  poor  of  the  City  of 
New  York. 

The  system  of  State  care  for  the  insane  of  New  York, 
now  in  operation  nearly  eleven  years,  has  proved  thor- 
oughly successful.  It  is  probably  true  that  nowhere  else 
in  the  world  are  so  many  patients  so  uniformly  well 
maintained  and  scientifically  treated,  as  in  the  State  of 
New  York  today.  During  the  years  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
official  work,  while  county  and  municipal  care  were  the 
rule,  and  State  care  the  exception,  and  while  there  was 
much  doubt  in  the  public  mind  as  to  the  merits  of  the  dif- 
ferent systems,  she  early  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
State  care  was  the  best,  and  was  the  active  and  consistent 
advocate  of  the  uniform  system  which  now  happily  pre- 
vails, and  her  services  in  this  cause  have  far  exceeded  any 
mention  of  them  here  made.  Her  heart  must  have  re- 
joiced at  the  final  victory  of  the  friends  of  State  care. 


CHAPTER  XI 
Work  for  Dependent  Children 

An  important  reform  in  the  care  of  the  dependent 
children  in  the  State  was  secured  by  the  enactment  of 
what  is  now  often  referred  to  as  the  Children's  Law.  In 
1868,  the  year  following  the  establishment  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  an  examination  of  the  county  and  city 
poorhouses,  as  these  almshouses  were  then  called,  made 
by  members  of  the  Board  showed  that  they  then  housed 
2261  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  Board 
at  once  publicly  took  the  position  that  the  almshouses 
were  unfit  places  in  which  to  rear  children,  and  that  these 
institutions  '' should  be  maintained  exclusively  as  retreats 
or  infirmaries  for  sick,  aged  or  helpless  indigents.''  The 
influence  of  the  Board,  supported  by  private  charitable 
organizations,  and  reenforced  by  public  opinion,  had  by 
October  1,  1873,  caused  the  reduction  of  the  number  of 
children  in  the  almshouses  to  1015. 

William  Pry  or  Letchworth,  of  Portage,  then  Vice- 
President  of  the  State  Board,  visited  the  almshouses  at 
the  request  of  the  Board  during  the  year  1874  and  ex- 
amined the  children  still  retained  in  them.  Assisted  by 
the  late  Dr.  Charles  S.  Hoyt,  then  Secretary  of  the  Board, 
Mr.  Letchworth  led  a  movement  to  have  all  the  children 
promptly  removed  from  these  institutions.  For  several 
years  much  of  his  time  and  thought  were  devoted  to  this 

244 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN  245 

task,  and  while  he  no  doubt  had  the  sympathy  of  the  State 
Board,  nevertheless  he  did  the  work.  At  first  he  appeared 
before  many  Boards  of  Supervisors  and  advocated  the 
voluntary  removal  of  the  children.  Afterward,  when 
the  plan  of  keeping  the  children  in  almshouses  was 
abandoned  by  many  of  the  counties,  Mr.  Letchworth 
conceived  the  idea  of  a  law  forbidding  the  commitment 
of  children  to  the  almshouses  of  the  State.  The  Chil- 
dren's Law  framed  by  him  with  the  assistance  of  Dr. 
Hoyt,  was  enacted  in  1875.  This  Act  prohibited,  from 
and  after  January  1,  1876,  the  commitment  of  children 
over  three  and  under  sixteen  years  of  age  to  almshouses, 
and  directed  the  removal  to  family  care,  orphan  asylums, 
or  other  appropriate  iDstitutions,  of  all  children  between 
the  ages  named  whom  the  almshouses  then  sheltered. 

This  reform  accomplished,  Mr.  Letchworth,  desiring  to 
ascertain  the  condition  of  the  other  institutions  in  the 
State  of  which  children  were  inmates,  made  in  1875  a 
comprehensive  and  painstaking  series  of  visits  to  them. 
His  ''Report  on  Orphan  Asylums,  Reformatories  and 
other  Institutions  of  the  State  having  the  Care  and  Cus- 
tody of  Children, '^  dated  January  11,  1876,  was  published 
in  the  Ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Board,  covering 
the  year  1875.  This  useful  and  monumental  pubhc 
paper,  the  first  of  its  character  ever  presented,  com- 
prised over  five  hundred  printed  pages  and  exhibited 
a  complete  survey  of  the  conditions  prevailing  in  the  123 
children's  homes  reported  upon,  which  at  that  time 
sheltered  17,791  inmates.  The  author  was  immediately 
recognized  as  the  leading  authority  in  the  State  of  New 


246  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

York  on  questions  relating  to  the  care  of  dependent 
children. 

An  examination  of  the  niinutes  of  the  State  Board 
during  the  thirteen  years  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  membership 
discloses  many  entries  showing  her  continual  interest  in 
the  welfare  of  dependent  children.  At  a  meeting  held 
March  8,  1877,  ''on  the  statement  of  a  case  by  Mrs. 
Lowell,  the  Board  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  loca- 
tion of  orphan  asylums  on  the  grounds  of  the  county 
poorhouses  and  under  the  charge  of  poorhouse  officials 
is  not  in  conformity  with  the  act  of  1875  'For  better  pro- 
tection of  pauper  and  destitute  children.'" 

On  February  6,  1878,  Mrs.  Lowell  presented  and  read 
a  "Report  on  the  Condition  of  the  Dependent  Children  of 
Westchester  County,  recently  removed  from  the  House  of 
the  Good  Shepherd  by  the  Superintendent  of  the  Poor.'' 
This  report  was  probably  presented  in  manuscript,  not 
printed,  and  afterwards  lost.  At  a  special  meeting  of  the 
Board,  May  12,  1880,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Letchworth,  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  assigned  to  membership  on  a  special  coromit- 
tee  of  three,  appointed  in  compliance  with  the  request  of 
the  Directors  of  the  New  York  Juvenile  Asylum,  to 
examine  the  affairs  and  management  of  that  institution. 
Mrs.  Lowell,  in  behalf  of  this  committee,  submitted  and 
read  a  report  at  the  Board  meeting  September  15,  in  that 
year,  which  was  accepted  and  a  copy  ordered  sent  to  the 
President  of  the  Board  of  Directors  of  the  Asylum. 

On  motion  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  the  Board,  on  January  13, 
1881,  resolved:  "That  in  the  opinion  of  this  Board,  the 
establishment  of  homes  under  county  care  for  dependent 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT   CHILDREN  247 

children  is  opposed  to  the  spirit  and  reason  of  Chapter 
173,  Laws  of  1875,  the  Children's  Law  and  Chapter  404, 
Laws  of  1878/'  The  second  statute  cited  modified  the 
original  Children's  Law  by  changing  the  age  limits  from 
three  to  sixteen  years,  to  two  to  sixteen  years  and  ex- 
tended its  provisions  so  that  it  became  unlawful  to  conmiit 
such  children  to  jails  as  vagrants,  truants,  or  disorderly 
persons.  The  violation  of  the  law  was  made  a  misde- 
meanor, and  the  second  section  made  it  possible  to  se- 
cure the  transfer  of  children  not  properly  cared  for  by 
institutions  or  families. 

The  following  letter  addressed  to  the  Assistant  Secretary 
of  the  State  Board,  shows  Mrs.  Lowell's  early  solicitude 
at  the  increasing  munber  of  dependent  children  under  in- 
stitutional care. 


Manchester-by-the-Sea,  July  21,  1885. 
My  dear  Mr.  Fanning  : 

Can  you  have  a  table  made  for  me,  showing  the  exact 
number  of  dependent  children  supported  by  public  and 
private  funds  in  New  York  City  in  1874  (if  the  Children's 
Law  went  into  effect  Jan.  1st,  '75)  and  in  1884  ? 

The  number,  for  instance,  on  Randall's  Island  and 
in  each  of  the  then  existing  private  institutions  in  1874, 
and  the  same  (giving  all  the  new  institutions)  in  1884, 
with  the  cost  in  each  and  the  proportion  of  public  money 
appropriated  to  each.  Of  coiu-se  what  I  want  to  show  is 
the  increase  in  the  number  of  children  and  in  the  cost 
to  the  city  during  the  past  ten  years.  It  seems  to  me 
that  what  we  must  insist  on  is  that  children  supported 
by  public  funds  shall  belong  to  the  State,  the  parents  to 


248  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

have  no  claim  on  them.  If  parents  do  not  want  to 
give  up  their  children  they  must  support  them  or  put 
them  on  private  charity  to  maintain. 

Shortly  afterwards  the  same  concern  was  shown  in  a 
letter  addressed  to  the  President  of  the  State  Board. 

West  New  Brighton,  December  1, 1885. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  have  just  received  your  letter  and  hasten  to  answer  it, 
because  I  do  not  want  you  to  suppose,  as  you  seem  to, 
that  I  do  not  approve  of  the  Children's  Law  and  do 
approve  of  mixing  innocent  children  with  boys  already 
experienced  in  vice.  I  heartily  agree  with  you  in  your 
views  on  both  these  points,  but  I  did  not  believe  the  way 
to  prevent  the  latter  evil  in  the  House  of  Refuge  was  to 
make  that  institution  a  perfectly  acceptable  place  to 
which  to  commit  innocent  children.  I  think  the  Houses 
of  Refuge  ought  to  remain  the  reformatories  to  which 
bad  boys  shall  be  committed,  and  that  homeless  and  truant 
boys  should  be  sent  to  entirely  other  and  distinct  institu- 
tions, when  it  is  necessary  that  they  should  be  sent  to 
institutions  at  all.  I  would  join  you  in  approving  the 
submitting  of  a  bill  to  the  Legislature  to  accomplish  this. 

As  to  the  Children's  Law,  of  course  I  agree  that  it  was 
of  inunense  value  in  getting  the  children  out  of  the  poor- 
houses,  but  I  think  that  the  great  increase  of  dependent 
children  that  has  followed  its  enforcement  is  a  great  evil 
and  that  we  must  find  some  remedy  for  it.  I  am  writing  a 
report  which  I  shall  present  at  the  meeting  on  the  15th, 
recommending  the  approval  of  a  bill  for  the  creation  of  a 
new  officer  for  New  York  City,  who  shall  have  the  entire 
charge  of  all  the  institutions  on  RandalFs  Island  which 
contain  children,  and  who  shall  also  have  power  to  commit 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         249 

children  to  private  institutions  and  discharge  them  from 
them.  In  this  way  the  advantages  gained  by  the  Brooklyn 
Law  will  be  attained  in  New  York  without  the  great 
drawback  of  putting  the  dependent  children  back  into  the 
hands  of  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and 
Corrections. 

With  an  officer  whose  duty  it  should  be  to  investigate 
the  status  of  parents  bringing  children  for  commitment, 
and  a  preliminary  stay  on  Randall's  Island  in  quaran- 
tine, of  all  children  before  their  final  admission  to  private 
institutions,  many,  if  not  all  of  the  troubles  we  now  suffer 
from  would  be  remedied. 

Of  course  I  would  have  the  city  property  on  RandalFs 
Island  entirely  devoted  to  the  children,  and  no  inmate  or 
employee  of  the  department  of  Public  Charities  allowed  on 
it. 

I  should  be  very  glad  to  know  before  the  meeting 
what  you  think  of  this  sketch. 

The  minutes  of  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board,  held 
December  15-17,  1885,  record  the  presentation  and  read- 
ing, by  Mrs.  Lowell,  of  a  ^'Report  on  the  Orphan  Asylum 
Societies  of  the  City  of  New  York,''  which  was  accepted 
and  ordered  transmitted  to  the  Legislature  with  the 
Annual  Report  of  the  Board. 

Pursuant  to  provisions  of  the  Membership  Corporation 
Law,  the  approval  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  to 
certificates  of  incorporation  of  private  charitable  institu- 
tions for  the  care  of  orphan,  pauper,  or  destitute  children 
has  since  1883  been  a  condition  precedent  to  the  filing  of 
the  certificate.  This  is  one  of  the  most  useful  functions 
of  the  Board,  and  has  prevented  many  unnecessary  or 


250  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ill-considered  incorporations.  It  is  the  practice  of  the 
Board  to  act  upon  such  applications  after  reference  to 
and  written  report  from  a  Commissioner  or  committee. 
At  a  meeting  of  the  Board  held  July  11,  1889,  Mrs. 
Lowell  presented  the  following  preliminary  report  upon 
an  intended  application  of  this  character,  which  was  con- 
sidered of  such  value  by  the  Board  that  it  was  inserted  in 
full  in  the  minutes  of  that  meeting : 

To  THE  State  Board  of  Charities: 

A  few  weeks  since,  Monsignor  Donelly,  one  of  the 
vicars-general  of  New  York,  requested  me  to  interest 
myself  in  the  plans  of  some  Italian  Sisters  of  the  Order 
of  St.  Francis  of  Sales,  who  had  come  to  this  city  for  the 
purpose  of  opening  an  asylum  for  Italian  children. 

I  met  the  Superior  of  the  Order,  who  intends  shortly 
to  return  to  Italy,  and  two  of  the  sisters,  at  St.  Michael's 
rectory,  on  June  15,  and  learned  that  they  had  been 
here  about  two  months,  and  desired  to  establish  an  asy- 
lum (for  girls  at  first,  later  for  boys  also)  to  receive  orphan, 
half-orphan  and  deserted  children  of  Italians ;  that  they 
had  hired  a  home  (No.  43  East  Fifty-ninth  Street),  and 
intended  also  to  teach  a  day  school  in  Roosevelt  Street. 
They  said  they  desired  to  be  incorporated,  in  order  to 
be  enabled  to  receive  committed  children  and  public 
money  for  their  support.  I  explained  to  them  and  to  the 
vicar-general,  that  I  thought  it  necessary  to  be  very  careful 
in  acting  in  this  matter;  that  it  would  be  a  dangerous 
precedent  to  grant  a  charter  to  foreigners  coming  here  for 
the  purpose  of  opening  an  asylum  for  foreign  children,  to  be 
supported  by  money  raised  by  taxation.  I  said  that  it 
seemed  to  me  to  be  necessary  to  secure  responsible  resi- 
dents of  New  York  City  as  incorporators,  and  to  have  very 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         251 

strict  limits  as  to  age,  length  of  residence  in  the  United 
States  and  in  New  York  State  and  City,  ability  of  parents 
to  pay,  numbers  to  be  supported,  length  of  time  for  which 
supported,  and  probably  as  to  other  points,  in  order  to 
avoid  the  establishment  of  such  an  asylum  acting  as  a 
temptation  to  poor  Itahans  to  inunigrate.  I  told  them 
that,  at  present,  there  was  a  strong  inclination  on  the  part 
of  Itahans  to  place  their  children  in  institutions  ("al 
Collegio,"  as  they  called  it),  and  that  I  heard  in  two 
different  institutions  of  the  practice  on  the  part  of  Italians, 
able  to  maintain  their  children,  of  paying  brokers  of  their 
own  nation  to  secure  admission  for  them. 

I  called  at  the  house  of  the  Sisters  on  June  18th  and  went 
over  it.  Finding  that  they  already  had  four  children  as 
inmates,  and  were  ignorant  of  the  necessity  of  any  hcense, 
I  advised  their  applying  to  the  Board  of  Health  for  per- 
mission to  receive  children.  I  was  received  with  much 
kindness,  and  the  superior  seemed  to  appreciate  the  force 
of  all  I  had  said. 

I  make  this  report  at  present,  in  order  to  suggest  that 
when  the  application  is  received,  it  be  very  closely  scruti- 
nized, as  it  will  serve  as  a  precedent  and  model  for  others 
to  be  framed  in  the  future.  I  would  also  suggest  that 
it  is  well,  when  foreign  children  are  supported  in  this 
country  by  pubhc  funds,  that  they  should  be  brought  up 
as  Americans,  and  not  as  foreigners. 

Respectfully  submitted, 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 
New  York,  July  6,  1889. 

Her  second  comprehensive  '^  Report  upon  the  Care  of 
Dependent  Children  in  the  City  of  New  York  and  Else- 
where" was  presented  at  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board 


252  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

held  December  11,  1889,  accepted  and  ordered  trans- 
mitted to  the  Legislature.  A  digest  of  this  report 
is  included  in  this  chapter.  This  was  Mrs.  Lowell's 
last  appearance  at  a  meeting  of  the  State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties, her  term  of  office  expiring  shortly  afterward.  Her 
final  official  act  was  one  intended  to  improve  the  condition 
of  dependent  children.  Her  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
children  was  however,  continued ;  this  is  illustrated  by  the 
following  letters,  of  which  the  first  was  addres^d  to  Oscar 
Craig,  of  Rochester,  who  in  April,  1889,  succeeded  Mr. 
Letchworth  as  President  of  the  State  Board. 

120  East  30th  St.,  March  20, 1891. 
My  dear  Mr.  Craig  : 

I  saw  yesterday  for  the  first  time  a  copy  of  Assembly 
Bill,  959,  introduced  by  Mr.  Beakes  (and  referred  to  the 
Judiciary  Committee),  and  although  I  suppose  you  know 
all  about  it  already,  it  is  so  dangerous  a  measure,  that  I 
think  it  best  to  write  about  it  in  case  you  have  overlooked 
it.  It  is  an  amendment  to  the  Act  for  the  Care  of  Children, 
and  provides  for  the  full  support  by  outdoor  rehef  of  all 
pauper  children,  dependent  upon  their  mother,  unless 
she  is  declared  by  the  County  Judge  to  be  an  unfit  person 
to  have  charge  of  them.  The  bill  expressly  forbids  the 
putting  any  such  child,  that  is,  any  child  dependent  upon 
its  mother,  into  an  institution  of  any  kind,  taking  away 
all  authority  from  the  county  officials  in  the  matter. 

Of  course  3^ou  know  I  do  not  approve  of  the  wholesale 
putting  of  children  into  institutions,  but  neither  do  I 
approve  of  obUgatory  outdoor  relief. 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         253 

120  East  30th  St.,  New  York,  July  8th,  1891. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  have  yours  of  July  4th,  and  write  you  agam  because 
it  seems  to  me,  as  you  say,  that  very  little  information 
of  value  can  be  obtained,  unless  each  particular  child  in 
each  institution  is  reported  on  separately,  and  I  want  to 
beg  you  to  insist  upon  having  the  schedules  made  out  in 
that  way. 

If  the  United  States  census  can  be  taken  by  individuals, 
there  is  no  reason  why  the  census  of  oiu-  institutions 
could  not  be  taken  in  the  same  way,  and  I  should  think 
it  would  be  much  better  to  defer  the  inquiry,  if  necessary, 
until  you  can  obtain  a  special  appropriation  for  extra 
clerical  force,  rather  than  to  collect  imperfect  statistics. 

120  East  30th  St.,  July  4th,  1893. 
My  dear  Mr.  Fanning  : 

I  received  yours  of  June  19th  at  Bath  with  my  paper, 
and  I  was  rather  disappointed  to  find  that  you  did  not 
think  I  had  laid  stress  on  the  duty  of  parents  to  care 
for  their  own  children,  for  I  thought  that  was  the 
special  point  I  made.  However,  it  cannot  be  too  much 
insisted  upon,  and  I  quoted  your  letter  the  next  day 
in  the  debate.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  preaching  of  duties 
is  what  is  needed  now.  If  everybody  did  what  duty 
demands  to  their  family  arid  fellow-citizens,  charity  would 
not  be  needed.  Selfishness  and  the  shrinking  from 
hardship  of  every  kind,  softness  of  character,  is  what  is 
doing  most  of  the  harm  now.  People  seem  to  think  that 
physical  suffering  is  the  worst  thing  that  can  happen 
to  anyone,  and  mushy  sympathy  is  responsible  for  a  great 
deal  of  demoralization.    I  was  sorry  you  were  not  at  the 


254  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

Convention,  but  was  glad  to  see  Mr.  Letchworth  and 
Dr.  Hoyt. 

Rock  Hakbob,  Westport,  N.  Y., 
June  28,  1894. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  have  been  asked  my  opinion  as  to  appropriations  from 
public  funds  to  sectarian  institutions  by  a  member  of  the 
Constitutional  Convention,  and  I  have  replied  that  I 
recommend : 

1st :  That  appropriations  from  public  funds  be  allowed, 
never  to  exceed,  however,  $1  per  week  per  capita. 

2nd :  That  these  appropriations  be  made  to  all  institu- 
tions, sectarian  and  others,  which  reach  a  certain  standard 
of  excellence. 

3rd :  That  their  condition  be  ascertained  by  annual 
inspection. 

4th :  That  the  amount  appropriated  be  diminished  by 
one-half  for  every  child  in  excess  of  300  in  any  given  insti- 
tution. 

Of  course  this  leaves  many  points  unsettled,  but  it 
seems  to  me  to  cover  what  is  fundamental. 

It  would  be  a  misfortune  to  have  sectarian  institutions 
discriminated  against,  and  our  present  position  is  certainly 
a  misfortune. 

If  you  think  there  is  any  radical  error  in  the  above,  so 
far  as  they  go,  please  let  me  know,  for  I  do  not  want  to  do 
harm  by  my  advice.  The  State  Board  ought  to  have 
adopted  some  principles  to  guide  the  Constitutional 
Convention ;  it  is  a  shame  to  have  so  much  knowledge 
and  devotion  as  there  is  in  the  Board  ignored  and  wasted 
at  this  important  juncture. 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN  255 

120  East  30th  Street,  New  York, 

January  7th,  1895. 
My  dear  Mr.  Stewart  : 

I  have  just  given  your  address  to  Dr.  Moreau  Morris,  of 
the  Board  of  Health,  who  has  really  done  a  great  deal 
to  improve  the  children's  institutions  in  this  city,  and  I 
think  you  could  not  find  a  better  inspector. 

As  to  the  rules,  —  how  would  one  do  requiring  that 
children  supported  by  pubUc  money  (unless  in  a  Reforma- 
tory) must  go  to  the  pubhc  school  after  they  reach  six 
years?  Going  out  of  the  institution  and  mixing  with 
other  children  does  more  to  counteract  the  institution 
influence  than  any  other  one  thing. 

The  value  of  play  and  outdoor  recreation  for  the  health 
and  normal  development  of  all  children,  but  especially 
for  those  of  the  tenements  of  our  great  cities,  was  early 
recognized  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  she  was  among  the  first 
through  whose  efforts  a  playground  under  private  manage- 
ment was  opened  for  children  in  New  York  City.  In  the 
spring  of  1890,  she  secured  control  of  a  plot  of  vacant  land 
on  West  Fiftieth  Street,  between  Eleventh  and  Twelfth 
Avenues,  and  had  it  suitably  fenced  and  protected  at  a 
gate  by  a  man  who  saw  that  no  older  boys  or  girls  were  ad- 
mitted. This  playground,  known  as  the  ^'  Sand  Park, "  was 
open  from  8  a.m.  to  6  p.m.  from  June  to  September  for  two 
years,  and  was  in  charge  of  a  directress  and  two  assistants, 
of  whom  one  was  a  kindergartener  and  the  other  a  regular 
teacher.  Boys  were  admitted  in  the  morning  and  girls 
in  the  afternoon ;  sand  was  provided  and  pails  and  shovels 
given  to  the  younger  children,  who  were  placed  under  the 


256  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

care  of  the  older  boys  and  girls ;  turning  bars  and  swings 
were  also  set  up  for  them.  Industrial  training,  principally 
in  woodwork,  was  given  the  boys,  and  the  girls  were  in- 
structed in  sewing.  All  the  children  were  taught  games  and 
songs  used  in  kindergarten  work.  Mrs.  Lowell  not  only 
established  this  park,  but  raised  the  money  needed  to  carry 
on  the  work  described,  regularly  spent  part  of  two  days 
a  week  there,  and  visited  it  almost  daily. 

More  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  for  children  was  done 
through  the  agency  of  the  Outdoor  Recreation  League, 
of  which  organization  she  was  treasurer.  In  1898  the 
following  enterprises  of  the  League  were  mentioned  in  a 
circular :  a  sunomer  camp  for  working  boys  in  Pelham  Bay 
Park ;  a  playground  for  children  at  Ninety-fourth  Street 
and  Amsterdam  Avenue ;  cooperation  with  the  Board  of 
Education  in  visiting  school  playgrounds ;  open-air  gym- 
nasiums at  Hester  Street  Park  and  in  a  lot  at  Fifty-second 
Street  and  Twelfth  Avenue;  increasing  the  number  of  play- 
grounds. The  movement  for  parks  and  playgrounds  for 
children  is  now  widespread,  and  has  resulted  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  national,  and  many  state  associations. 

From  conversations  had  with  Mrs.  Lowell  on  the  sub- 
ject of  recreation  piers,  before  any  of  them  had  been  built 
and  opened  to  the  public,  I  know  that  she  was  also  one  of 
the  first,  if  not  the  first,  to  urge  the  city  authorities 
to  build  and  set  apart  second  stories  to  some  of  the  piers 
on  each  of  the  river  fronts  for  the  recreation  of  the  people. 
These  piers  are  now  an  inestimable  blessing  to  many 
thousands,  especially  to  the  dwellers  in  the  crowded  tene- 
ments as  refuges  from  the  torrid  heat  of  summer. 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         257 

A  Paper  Read  before  the  New  York   Association 
OF  Teachers,  1880  ^ 

Mr.  President  and  Members  of  the  New  York  State 
Association  of  Teachers: 

I  very  gladly  accepted  the  invitation  to  write  a  paper 
to  be  read  before  you,  because  I  cannot  count  it  other 
than  a  privilege  to  be  allowed  to  speak  to  men  and  women 
holding  positions  of  such  responsibility  and  trust. 

It  is  not  an  uncommon  fault  to  overrate  one's  own  im- 
portance and  the  weight  of  one's  own  influence  and  power, 
but  it  is  a  fault  which  is  impossible  to  a  school  teacher, 
for  I  do  not  believe  that  the  most  exalted  opinion  of  the 
dignity  and  responsibiUty  of  the  profession  could  place 
it  higher  than  it  should  stand.  Remembering  that  you 
have  in  your  hands  the  task  of  moulding  the  future  of 
more  than  six  million  men  and  women,  that  the  character 
of  the  people  of  the  State  of  New  York  is  to  take  its  im- 
press from  your  minds,  can  any  task  be  more  noble  or 
more  fearful  than  the  one  you  have  undertaken?  Your 
work  is  not,  hke  that  of  the  minister  and  preacher,  the 
almost  hopeless  task  of  counteracting  on  one  day  of  the 
week  all  that  selfishness  teaches  on  the  other  six ;  you  are 
at  work  day  after  day,  with  line  upon  line,  precept  upon 
precept,  gradually  shaping  the  minds  of  your  pupils. 
Yours  is  not  the  difficult  labor  of  the  philanthropist,  to 
reform  the  characters  of  adults,  hardened  by  years  of  bad 
habits ;  it  is  your  work  to  form  the  character  while  it  is  yet 

1  Published  in  pamphlet  form  by  Pillsbury,  680  Sixth  Avenue,  New- 
York  City,  in  1886. 


258  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

plastic,  to  tm^n  the  delicate  young  mind  this  way  or  that. 
If  you  are  noble  and  high-minded,  if  you  love  the  truth 
above  all  things,  if  you  take  the  right  views  of  life,  you  will 
train  up  noble  and  true  men  and  women,  and  your  pupils 
will  be  a  blessing  to  themselves  and  others.  If  you  are 
false  and  base,  if  you  value  the  things  that  are  temporal 
more  than  the  things  that  are  eternal,  your  pupils  will  be 
mean  and  worldly,  will  be  dishonest  and  degraded,  and 
you  may  one  day  feel  that  it  were  better  for  you  that  a 
millstone  had  been  hanged  about  your  neck  and  you  had 
been  cast  into  the  sea  rather  than  to  have  made  one  of 
those  little  ones  to  offend. 

Beheving  as  I  do  that  you  are  given  this  great  influence 
for  good  or  evil,  and  believing  too,  that  there  are  some 
radically  wrong  views  which  have  become  generally  ac- 
cepted by  you,  and  which  are,  unhappily,  also  partly 
because  of  your  holding  them,  very  deeply  rooted  among 
the  American  people  generally,  I  cannot  help,  as  I  have 
said,  being  very  grateful  for  the  opportunity  given  me  to 
point  out  to  you  some  of  these  errors  and  tell  you  some 
facts  which  may  startle  you  and  lead  you  to  consider  more 
deeply  the  whole  question  of  what  is  the  object  of  sending 
a  child  to  school  and  what  should  be  the  result  of  his  ten 
or  twelve  years  of  schooling. 

I  have  said  that  I  do  not  think  any  teacher  could  think 
any  more  highly  of  his  office  than  it  deserves ;  but  by  that 
I  mean  of  his  office  as  it  should  be,  not  as  it  too  often  is. 
My  ideal  of  a  teacher's  duty  is  to  fit  the  boys  and  girls 
entrusted  to  his  care  to  be  useful  citizens,  to  make  them 
men  and  women  who  shall  be  able  to  take  care  of  them- 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT   CHILDREN  259 

selves  and  others,  who  shall  do  their  duty  to  Grod  and  their 
neighbor.  Compared  to  this,  the  object  which  seems  too 
often  to  be  set  before  the  teacher,  is  too  insignificant  almost 
tp  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath ;  the  aim  seems  to  be 
to  teach  his  pupils  to  shine  on  exhibition  day,  to  learn  to 
read  and  spell  gUbly  and  write  a  composition  which  may 
be  pubUshed  in  the  county  paper.  In  fact,  while  educa- 
tion should  mean  the  training  of  the  body,  mind  and  soul, 
we  Americans  too  often  forget  both  body  and  soul  and 
devote  ourselves  to  a  miserable  one-sided  development 
of  the  mind.  Whether  the  error  began  with  the  teachers 
and  spread  to  parents  and  children,  or  whether  the  teachers 
share  it  only  because  they  are  part  of  the  people,  I  do  not 
know,  but  I  do  know  that  it  exists  and  that  it  is  not  an 
uncommon  thing  for  devoted,  hard-working  parents  to 
believe  that  they  are  doing  their  best  for  their  much  be- 
loved children  by  keeping  them  at  school  or  college,  while 
in  fact  they  are  training  their  minds  at  the  expense  not 
only  of  their  physical  strength,  but  of  their  ability  to  earn 
an  honest  living  and  of  every  noble  and  generous  feeling 
of  their  natures,  and  this  mistake  is  often  fostered  by 
teachers;  they  will  encourage  men  and  women  whose 
strength  is  daily  failing  under  the  strain  of  life,  to  give 
their  son  or  daughter  an  ''education,"  while  if  there  were 
one  spark  of  right  feeling  or  nobility  in  the  souls  of  those 
children,  they  would  scorn  to  take  an  advantage  for  them- 
selves at  such  a  cost  to  their  parents. 

With  all  our  education  and  our  public  school  system 
and  our  immense  expenditures  for  the  young,  we  find  that 
year  by  year,  in  tliis  country,  insanity  and  pauperism  and 


260  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

crime  are  increasing  out  of  proportion  to  the  increase  of 
the  population,  and  it  behooves  us  to  ask  not  only  whether 
our  schools  are  doing  all  they  should  and  could  to  prevent 
so  fearful  a  state  of  things,  but  also  whether  there  may 
not  be  some  causes  in  the  schools  themselves  which  may 
help  on  these  evils.  We  have  accustomed  ourselves  to 
believe  that  what  we  have  called  an  education  was  the 
safeguard  against  poverty  and  vice,  but  unfortunately 
our  hmited  kind  of  education  does  not  prove  so ;  we  must 
adopt  the  real  education  physical,  mental  and  moral,  if 
we  really  desire  to  stem  the  current  of  insanity,  pauperism 
and  crime  which  is  attaining  such  alarming  strength  in 
our  country. 

Under  the  head  of  physical  education  I  include  the 
training  of  the  body  itself  and  all  its  members,  and  would 
not  only  have  the  pupils  of  our  schools  compelled  to  keep 
themselves  in  health  while  in  school,  but  they  should  be 
taught  the  laws  by  which  they  could,  through  their  whole 
lives,  maintain  their  bodies  in  good  working  order,  and 
they  should,  moreover,  be  given  the  power  and  ability  to 
earn  a  living  and  support  themselves  and  their  children. 
This  sounds  hke  a  formidable  innovation,  perhaps,  but  in 
reality  it  would  not  prove  so.  As  to  bodily  health  during 
school  years,  it  would  be  easy  to  so  conduct  our  schools 
that  they  should  not  overtax  the  strength  of  the  pupils 
or  teachers ;  and  that  should  be  my  first  reform.  Of  the 
three  morning  hours,  one  should  be  devoted  to  exercise, 
gymnastics  or  drilling,  and  there  should  be  two  hours' 
recess  before  the  afternoon  session,  and  no  studying  before 
breakfast  or  by  lamplight  out  of  school.    All  the  conmion 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         261 

laws  of  health  regarding  food,  cleanliness,  fresh  air  and 
exercise  should  be  taught  and  enforced  in  every  school, 
and  should  never  be  broken  for  the  sake  of  forcing  bright 
scholars  to  greater  attainment  or  punishing  backward 
scholars  for  laziness  or  dulness.  I  was  much  struck 
lately  with  some  statements  regarding  the  causes  of  in- 
sanity, made  in  the  annual  report  of  the  Medical  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Insane  Asylum,  at  Toronto,  Ontario,  which 
apply  unhappily  to  the  United  States,  as  well  as  to  the 
neighboring  province,  and  therefore  I  quote  it : 

'^  There  is  a  serious  source  of  mental  and  physical  de- 
terioration, which,  in  a  secondary  way,  seriously  affects 
the  adult  population  as  well  as  the  youth  of  our  land; 
it  is  the  senseless  mental  overstrain  to  which  the  school 
children  are  subjected.  .  .  .  An  examination  of  the  list  of 
studies  required  of  children  and  youths  up  to  the  age  of 
twenty-one  and  beyond  it  in  our  schools  and  universities, 
shows  that  no  young  and  growing  brain  can  undertake 
the  work  laid  out  for  it  without  great  and  permanent 
injury  to  this  delicate  and  complex  organ.  Children  are 
put  in  the  worst  ventilated  houses  which  can  be  found  in 
the  country,  and  these  often  are  literally  crammed  with 
them.  In  this  foul  air  they  study  for  hours  at  a  time. 
Evening  brings  no  relaxation  for  them,  for  a  task  needing 
several  hours^  study  must  be  done  before  bedtime  or  early 
in  the  morning ;  and  this  becomes  a  dreary  iminviting 
round.  They  successfully  or  vainly  endeavor,  according 
to  their  strength,  to  overcome  these  daily  burdens  and 
obstacles  to  health,  by  a  constant  effort  which  produces 
mental  tension.  The  result  is,  many  never  recover  from 
the  struggle  during  the  remainder  of  a  lengthy  hfe.  Night 
or  day,  except  a  few  hours  of  sleep,  from  the  age  of  seven 


262  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

up  to  manhood  or  womanhood,  the  susceptible  and  tender 
brain  is  on  the  rack,  and  this  strain  is  at  a  time  when  only 
moderate  exercise  is  healthy  to  this  impressionable  organ. 
The  brain  must,  like  the  rest  of  the  body,  in  its  early  days, 
gather  tone,  fibre  and  capacity  for  the  great  struggle  of 
life.  The  young  are  not  permitted  to  do  hard  manual  labor 
because  of  the  tenderness  of  the  body,  until  maturity  is 
almost  reached,  but  the  most  important  organ  of  our 
physical  system  is  urged  onwards  to  the  utmost  extent 
of  its  powers  from  babyhood  upwards.  It  needs  no 
prophet  to  see  that  this  hothouse  growth  in  a  foul  at- 
mosphere, and  a  uniform  system  of  forced  training,  with 
long  hours  of  study,  means  nervousness,  lassitude,  peri- 
odic headaches,  a  lax  prostrated  physical  and  mental 
system.  A  tendency  to,  and  an  invasion  of,  insanity  may 
end  the  chapter  of  blunders,  especially  if  a  hereditary 
predisposition  exists.  Such  are  the  recuperative  powers 
of  the  body  that  it  will,  in  a  majority  of  cases,  come  off 
victorious  against  a  legion  of  such  foes,  yet  an  alarming 
section  of  the  rising  generation  thus  educated  carry  into 
after  life,  in  some  form  of  nervous  or  brain  disorder,  the 
effects  of  the  prevailing  ignorance  and  persistent  efforts 
to  produce  a  precocious  race  by  a  short  cut,  and  this  in 
spite  of  ruined  constitutions.'^ 

As  I  have  said,  under  the  head  of  physical  education 
I  would  include  such  a  training  of  the  body  as  would 
enable  the  large  proportion  of  pupils  graduating  from 
school  who  cannot  earn  a  living  by  head  work,  to  earn  it 
by  hand  work,  and  would  create  and  foster  a  spirit  among 
teachers  and  pupils  which  should  recognize  that  to  follow 
the  example  of  Jesus  Christ  and  learn  and  practise  a  trade 
is  not  unworthy  of  any  boy.    I  do  not  advocate  the  teaching 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN  263 

of  trades  in  our  schools,  but  the  teaching  of  the  use  of  tools, 
which  would  give  such  control  of  the  hands  and  body  as 
would  make  it  easy  to  learn  whatever  trade  a  boy  might 
choose  after  leaving  school.  To  introduce  such  a  plan  of 
industrial  training  in  our  public  schools  would  not  be 
difficult  or  expensive ;  one  competent  master  could  teach 
three  classes  a  day  of  twelve  boys  each,  or  fifteen  classes 
a  week.  Such  industrial  training  has  been  strongly  ad- 
vocated in  Boston,  and  will  shortly,  it  is  hoped,  be  intro- 
duced there. 

The  argument  which  I  advance  in  support  of  this 
proposition  to  introduce  industrial  training  into  our  public 
schools,  is  the  only  one  which  I  acknowledge  to  be  of  amy 
weight  in  favor  of  a  pubHc  school  system  of  smy  kind ; 
and  that  is,  that  it  is  for  the  advantage  of  the  state  to 
expend  its  money  in  this  way.  The  state  owes  no  one  an 
education,  no  one  has  a  claim  on  the  state  for  an  educa- 
tion, but  in  self-defence,  the  state  has  adopted  the  poUcy 
of  educating  its  future  citizens,  in  order  to  ensure  its  own 
safety  and  prosperity.  Such  being  the  case,  if  it  can  be 
proved  that  an  industrial  training  for  its  citizens  is  as 
important  or  more  important  to  the  state  than  the  mental 
training  which  has  until  now  generally  been  considered 
sufficient,  it  requires  no  further  argument  to  show  that 
such  training  should  be  made  a  part  of  om*  educational 
system. 

The  statistics  of  our  prisons  and  those  of  other  states 
prove  beyond  a  question  that  the  fact  of  being  able  to 
read  and  write  does  not  deter  from  crime  or  ensure  the 
performance  of  pubUc  and  private  duties,  while  on  the 


264  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

contrary,  they  seem  to  prove  that  an  ability  to  earn  one's 
living  and  the  habit  of  steady  industry  are  great  safe- 
guards against  evil  practices.  .  .  . 

It  is  unnecessary,  however,  to  dwell  longer  upon  the 
aspect  of  the  educational  question  which  deals  with  that 
small  proportion  of  the  graduates  of  our  schools  who  be- 
come criminals.  We  may  confidently  hope  that  the  day 
will  never  come  when  the  great  majority  will  not  surely 
be  honest,  earnest,  and  hard-working ;  and  I  am  sure  that 
the  influence  of  school  teachers  will  be  all-powerful  in 
this  direction.  The  teachers  themselves  must  believe, 
in  order  to  instil  the  belief  into  the  minds  of  their  pupils, 
that  good  steady  work  is  worthy  and  noble,  and  they  must 
teach  this  to  girls  as  well  as  boys ;  and  that  the  girls  may 
share  with  the  boys  the  advantage  of  industrial  learning, 
I  should  give  to  every  girl  educated  in  a  public  school  — 
and  could  I  have  my  way,  every  girl  in  the  State  should 
have  her  first  years  of  schooling  in  a  public  school  — 
such  teaching  as  would  prepare  her  to  be  a  good  house- 
wife and  mother.  Sewing  and  cooking  should  be  taught 
in  every  school. 

We  shall,  I  think,  be  a  much  wiser  and  happier  people 
when  our  young  men  and  women  learn  in  our  public  schools 
the  arts  which  will  help  them  to  bring  up  and  support  their 
families  comfortably  and  thriftily. 

I  may  pass  over  the  subject  of  mental  or  book  education^ 
simply  saying  that,  in  my  view,  it  should  be  made  more 
simple  and  more  thorough ;  that  fewer  subjects  should  be 
taught,  and  those  should  be  better  taught  than  at  present. 
The  great  aim  of  the  pubUc  school  teacher,  at  least,  should 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         265 

be  to  give  such  a  training  as  should  serve  as  a  foundation 
for  any  superstructure  that  could  be  put  upon  it. 

I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  the  province  of  the  State  to  lift 
any  of  its  children  to  great  heights  of  learning.  The 
education  given,  and  given  to  all,  should  be  such  as 
to  open  the  door  to  learning  to  those  who  wish  to  enter, 
and  to  elevate  and  strengthen  the  general  intelligence. 

Instead  of  spending  the  people^s  money  upon  higher 
education  for  a  few,  I  believe  it  should  be  spent  upon 
broader  education  for  all,  including  in  this  broader  educa^ 
tion,  as  I  have  said,  physical,  mental  and  moral  training. 
This  last,  the  most  important,  is  also  the  most  difficult 
and  the  most  dependent  on  the  individual  teacher.  Al- 
most the  whole  duty  of  the  teacher  under  this  head  seems 
to  me  to  be  comprised  in  giving  to  the  pupils  a  right  view 
of  life,  and  by  this  phrase  I  mean  a  great  deal.  I  mean  that 
the  children  shall  be  taught  what  things  are  of  real  and 
lasting  value  and  worthy  of  a  struggle  with  adverse  cir- 
cumstances, and  what  are  unsatisfying  and  useless  and 
not  worth  a  second  thought ;  that  they  shall  learn  to  set 
truth,  moral  and  intellectual  truth,  above  all  things,  and 
to  know  that  to  see  truly  is  to  see  what  God  has  made 
and  intended  us  to  see,  and  that  self-interest  and  cowardice 
can  never  see  truly. 

Moral  training  is  of  infinite  importance  for  the  individ- 
ual, for  the  state  and  for  the  nation ;  and  the  following 
words  of  Sir  Henry  Maudsley,  a  distinguished  English 
authority  on  insanity,  may  well  cause  parents  and  teachers 
to  tremble  at  the  thought  of  the  responsibility  laid  upon 
them: 


266  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

'^The  aim  of  a  good  education  should  be  to  develop 
the  power  and  habit  of  what  the  events  of  hfe  will  not 
fail  to  rudely  enforce,  renunciation  and  self-control,  and 
to  lead  to  the  continued  transference  of  thoughts  and 
feelings  into  external  action  of  a  beneficent  kind.  By 
the  habitual  encouragement  of  self -feeling,  and  by  an  ego- 
tistic development  in  all  the  relations  of  life,  a  character 
may,  by  imperceptible  degrees,  be  so  framed  that  insanity 
is  the  natural  and  consummate  evolution  of  it,  while  every 
step  taken  in  such  deterioration  will  so  far  predispose  to 
insanity  under  adverse  circumstances  of  life/' 

A  school  is  no  place  for  theological  discussion  or  the 
teaching  of  sectarianism,  but  fortunately  all  parents  will 
imite  in  wishing  that  their  children  shall  be  taught  to  love 
God,  and  to  know  their  responsibihty  to  him  and  their 
duty  to  their  fellow-men. 

I  cannot  better  close  my  paper  than  by  quoting  the  words 
of  a  teacher  ^  speaking  to  teachers  upon  waste  of  labor 
in  the  work  of  education : 

'*But  last  of  all  there  is  a  waste  that  brings  loss  and 
sorrow  to  the  world ;  this  is  neglect  of  moral  and  religious 
instruction  in  connection  with  intellectual  training.  Who 
are  the  men  who  are  causing  humanity  to  blush  by  their 
dishonesty  and  corruption,  poisoning  the  world  at  the  same 
time  that  they  are  cheating  and  astonishing  it?  Why, 
men  who  are  educated,  but  who  despise  the  slow  methods 
of  honest  gain  and  reject  the  old-fashioned  morality  of  the 
Bible.  There  must  be  a  searching  for  the  foundation; 
and  that  instruction  or  that  education  which  does  not  make 
prominent  justice  as  well  as  benevolence ;  law  as  well  as 
liberty;  honesty  as  well  as  thrift,  and  purity  of  life  as 

^  President  of  Williams  College. 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN  267 

well  as  enjoyment ;  should  be  stamped  by  every  true  edu- 
cator as  a  waste  and  a  curse,  for  so  it  will  prove  in  the  end. 
We  understand  the  importance  of  our  work,  the  value  of 
mental  and  moral  culture,  we  see  the  inviting  fields  that 
call  the  student  to  labor,  and  the  waiting  world  that  needs 
his  time  and  the  strength  of  his  best  cultured  powers. 
Let  us  see  to  it  that  no  old  notions,  no  routine  of  duty, 
no  shrinking  from  work  or  responsibiUty,  shall  spoil  our 
harvest,  so  that  at  last  we  shall  look  back  on  a  waste  of 
energy  and  time.  Let  us  work  while  the  day  lasts,  with 
our  might.  Let  us  see  that  all  our  work  is  of  the  best 
kind.  Let  us  train  our  students  for  the  study,  for  the 
family,  for  the  state,  for  the  world.  If  we  send  them  forth 
with  the  abiUty  to  labor,  with  a  love  of  truth  and  justice, 
and  with  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  our  work  will  be  a  bless- 
ing to  them  and  to  the  world." 

Children  ^ 

It  is  a  truism  to  say  that  the  most  important  work  to 
be  done  among  the  poor  is  for  the  children,  and  I  am 
almost  inclined  to  declare  that  nothing  else  is  of  any  im- 
portance at  all,  as  compared  with  it,  for  every  other 
branch  of  charitable  work  produces  but  small  results  and 
for  only  short  periods  of  time,  while  what  is  done  for  the 
children  may  make  the  difference  for  each  child  between 
a  whole  long  life  of  virtue  or  of  vice,  and  may  make  the 
difference  for  the  community  between  a  large  or  a  small 
mmaber  of  paupers  for  hundreds  of  years. 

It  is  kind  and  it  is  pleasant  and  it  is  a  duty  to  reheve 

physical  suffering ;  and  yet  more  or  less  of  physical  suffer- 

lAn  address  delivered  on  November  18,  1898,  in  Harlem,  before 
volunteer  workers  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society. 


268  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ing  is  not  a  matter  of  vital  importance.  The  patient, 
if  left  alone,  will  usually  either  get  well  or  die  before  very- 
long.  It  is  a  duty  to  help  the  aged ;  and  yet,  whatever 
the  suffering  m.Siy  be,  it  cannot  last  very  many  years, 
and  it  leaves  no  bad  results  when  it  is  over.  If  one  can 
reclaim  the  man  or  woman  who  is  leading  a  vicious  life, 
it  is  a  blessed  work ;  and  yet  how  hard  it  is,  and  how  often 
it  proves  fruitless  I 

It  is  far  otherwise  with  what  is  done  for  children.  They 
may  be  easily  influenced,  and  the  influence  acquired  over 
them  may  be  powerful  and  may  be  felt  even  for  generations. 
There  is  thus  every  reason  for  a  concentration  of  effort 
upon  the  children,  and  as  I  have  said,  in  comparison  wifth 
this  work  it  seems  as  if  no  other  were  of  any  importance. 

But  since  this  work  for  children  is  so  important,  since 
the  material  to  be  moulded  is  so  ductile  for  a  few  years, 
and  yet  carries  the  impress  it  has  received  through  life 
and  on  to  future  generations,  it  becomes  of  tremendous 
moment  to  do  the  right  thing  for  them,  to  do  the  best 
thing  for  them,  and  not  to  injure  them  under  the  mistaken 
view  that  we  are  guiding  them  rightly. 

I  am  going  to  speak  today  only  of  what  should  be  done 
for  children  abnormally  situated,  and  of  course  I  want  it 
to  be  fully  understood  that  I  recognize  that  the  training 
and  education  of  the  children  of  the  great  mass  of  the 
people  is  to  be  left  to  their  parents,  to  the  pubHc  schools, 
and  to  such  other  agencies  as  the  community  may  devise 
to  forward  their  full  and  well-rounded  development  in 
body,  mind  and  soul. 

What  then  can  be  done  by  private  benevolent  societies 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         269 

and  by  private  benevolent  individuals  for  children  whose 
parents  are  unable  to  bring  them  up  properly  ?  What  can 
be  done  which  shall  be  beneficent  as  well  as  benevolent  ? 
One  very  natural  answer  will  occur  to  a  great  many  people 
—  that  these  children  should  be  taken  away  from  their 
parents  and  put  with  persons  who  can  bring  them  up 
properly ;  and  the  fact  that  there  are  in  the  old  City  of 
New  York  today  eighteen  thousand  children  who  have 
l3een  taken  away  from  their  parents  and  placed  with  others 
to  be  brought  up  shows  how  generally  this  solution  of  the 
difficulty  is  considered  the  best,  and  how  easy  it  is  supposed 
to  be  to  find  those  who  can  bring  children  up  better  than 
it  is  possible  for  their  parents  to  do. 

But  unhappily  the  problem  is  by  no  means  so  simple 
as  it  appears  when  first  considered,  and  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  decide  upon  the  comparative  value  of  a  home  and  a 
strange  bringing  up.  To  begin  with,  there  is  a  great  variety 
both  in  the  degree  and  in  the  kind  of  incapacity  on  the  part 
of  the  parents.  They  may  only  be  incapable  physically, 
they  may  be  ill  or  weak,  or  the  father  may  be  dead  and 
the  mother  left  alone  to  take  the  place  of  both  father  and 
mother,  and  yet  they  may  love  their  children  dearly  and 
be  eminently  fit  to  bring  them  up  worthily.  Surely  in 
such  cases,  it  cannot  be  right  to  tear  the  children  away  ? 
They  may  be  foolish,  weak  and  over-indulgent,  they  may 
be  wicked  and  cruel,  they  may  degrade  and  corrupt  their 
children;  and  while  there  is  no  question  that  children 
should  be  saved  from  parents  who  will  maim  them  physically 
or  morally,  there  is  a  decided  question  as  to  whether  it  is 
good  for  them  to  be  taken  away  from  fooUsh  and  weak 


270  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

parents,  for  there  is  every  degree  of  foolishness  and 
weakness,  and  it  is  difficult  to  decide  when  the  evil  of 
the  foolishness  and  weakness  outweighs  the  good  of  the 
unconscious  discipline  of  family  life  and  of  family  affection. 
On  the  other  hand,  also,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  what 
the  alternative  is.  To  what  influences  and  training  are 
the  children  to  be  subjected?  Just  as  there  is  a  great 
variety  in  the  character  of  incompetent  parents,  so  there 
is  a  great  variety  in  the  methods  by  which  children 
may  be  educated  when  taken  away  from  their  parents. 
Children  may  be  put  in  an  institution  where  there  are 
many  hundreds  of  inmates,  where  they  must  live  by  rule, 
and  in  crowds,  without  personal  affection,  without  natural 
outlet  of  any  kind,  where  their  health,  their  feelings,  and 
their  minds  and  souls  must  be  stultified,  because  the  life 
is  absolutely  unnatural.  They  may  also  be  put  in  an  in- 
stitution where  there  are  only  a  few  children  and  where, 
so  far  as  is  possible,  every  effort  is  made  to  teach  them  the 
ways  of  family  hfe,  from  which  they  go  out  to  the  public 
school  and  mix  with  children  living  in  their  own  homes, 
and  are  thus  stimulated  mentally  and  morally,  and  escape 
some  of  the  very  bad  results  of  institution  life.  They  may 
also  not  be  put  in  an  institution  at  all,  but  be  boarded  out 
in  an  everyday  decent  family,  where  they  will  be  subjected 
to  all  the  natural  influences,  pleasant  and  unpleasant,  of 
common  family  life,  and  so  become  fitted  to  take  their 
part  in  such  life  in  the  future.  This  unconscious  educa- 
tion in  the  little  daily  duties  of  life  is  what  no  institution 
can  give,  and  therefore,  if  children  must  be  taken  from 
their  own  homes,  the  best  substitute  is  another  home, 


WORK    FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         271 

unless   indeed    they    are    abnormal    children    and    need 
special  training  or  discipline. 

But  I  have  only  touched  on  this  question  of  home  vs. 
outside  training  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  even 
though  children  may  be  poorly  placed  with  their  own 
parents,  it  is  a  very  serious  question  whether  they  should 
be  removed,  and  also  that  it  is  very  important  to  choose 
wisely  the  substitute  for  their  homes,  if  it  is  necessary  to 
separate  them.  In  deciding  the  question  of  removal, 
it  is  also  necessary  to  consider  not  only  the  direct  effect 
on  the  child  itself,  but  also  upon  the  parents  and  upon 
other  children  and  other  parents,  and  therefore,  as  I  have 
said,  the  problem  in  each  case  is  not  simple,  but  very 
compUcated.  But  I  shall  not  speak  further  of  the  children 
who  have  to  be  taken  away  from  their  parents,  but 
rather  of  the  comparatively  large  class  who  ought  not  to 
be  taken  away  and  who  yet  cannot  be  properly  brought 
up  without  outside  help ;  and  I  will  hastily  sketch  some 
of  the  kinds  of  help  they  need.  Take  first  the  families 
where  there  is  no  moral  deficiency,  where  the  sickness 
or  death  of  the  father  has  removed  the  natural  bread- 
winner and  has  made  it  necessary  for  the  mother  to  sup- 
port the  family,  in  whole  or  in  part,  besides  caring  for 
their  daily  well-being.  Some  women  can  do  both,  but 
not  the  average  woman  whom  we  meet.  They  must  be 
helped,  as  Mrs.  Tenney^  said  last  week,  and  I  feel  sure 
that  in  all  such  cases  the  help  must  be  given  upon  the  prin- 
ciples adopted  by  the  first  benevolent  society  established 

1  Mrs.  Sarah  E.  Tenney,  for  many  years  District  Secretary  in  the 
Northern  or  Williamsburgh  District  of  the  Brooklyn  Bureau  of  Charities. 


^72  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

hj  women  in  New  York  one  hundred  and  ten  years  ago, 
the  Society  for  the  Relief  of  Poor  Widows  with  Small 
Children.  By  that  society  a  regular  monthly  pension  is 
given,  and  the  family  is  placed  under  the  care  of  a  special 
member  of  the  society,  and  the  help  is  often  continued 
from  the  time  of  the  death  of  the  father  until  all  the  chil- 
dren are  over  ten  years  of  age.  Unhappily,  however,  the 
society  does  not  give  the  help  throughout  the  whole  year, 
and  therefore  the  principle  of  regular  help  is  not  carried 
out  by  them ;  nor  do  they  usually  give  large  enough  pen- 
sions, so  that  a  family  receiving  aid  from  the  society  has 
often  to  get  aid  from  elsewhere  also.  I  fear,  too,  that  often 
the  visitors  cannot  give  as  much  time  and  care  to  the 
family  as  is  needed.  Still  these  are  all  failures  to  live  up 
^o  their  own  principles,  and  the  principles  are,  as  I  have 
said,  those  upon  which  help  to  such  families  should  be 
given.  Regular  help,  friendly  supervision,  the  help  to  be 
as  much  as  is  needed  to  supplement  the  earnings  of  the 
mother,  and  the  supervision  to  be  continued  until  the 
children  have  been  trained  in  some  means  of  self-support  — 
these  are  the  essentials,  and  it  takes  a  great  deal  of  money 
for  each  family,  at  least  ten  dollars  a  month,  and  a  fair 
share  of  time  and  trouble ;  but  the  results  are  worth  it,  and 
it  ought  to  be  considered  cruel  and  wicked  to  take  children 
away  from  a  decent  mother  just  for  want  of  money  to  sup- 
port them  and  friends  to  look  after  them.  In  these  cases 
the  money  and  the  friend  are  equally  necessary,  and  the 
work  is  very  simple  indeed,  requiring  only  kindness  and  per- 
severance. It  is  necessary  to  see  that  there  is  money 
^enough,  regularly  supphed,  so  that  the  family  does  not 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         273 

suffer;  that  the  mother  does  not  overwork  herself,  but 
does  work  so  far  as  she  is  able;  that  her  work  does  not 
prevent  her  giving  the  proper  care  to  the  children ;  that 
the  latter  go  to  school  and  to  church  regularly ;  that  when 
old  enough,  they  begin  to  learn  some  good  trade ;  that  they 
get  work  and  keep  at  it ;  and  finally  that,  as  their  earnings 
increase,  the  money  given  to  the  mother  diminishes 
gradually  until  the  family  is  self-supporting. 

This  sort  of  help  is  not  demoralizing  nor  pauperizing, 
if  properly  watched,  because  it  only  places  the  family  in 
a  natural  position.  Women  and  children  ought  to  be 
supported,  and  there  is  no  sense  of  degradation  in  receiv- 
ing support.  The  woman  has  plenty  to  do  in  caring  for 
her  family ;  and  when  the  duty  of  supporting  them  also 
comes  upon  her,  it  is  an  unnatural  strain,  and  results  dis- 
astrously unless  she  can  be  helped. 

With  families  where  there  is  plenty  of  earning  power 
and  where  the  deficiencies  are  moral  and  not  physical,  the 
case  is  very  different ;  here  the  friend  is  of  paramount  im- 
portance and  the  giving  of  money  is  not  only  unnecessary, 
but  usually  very  hurtful,  and  the  work  is  very  hard  indeed, 
requiring  devotion  and  consecration.  If,  however,  such 
work  were  undertaken  by  a  number  of  people  with  con- 
scientious persistent  zeal,  it  would  go  far  to  make  the  next 
generation  very  much  better  than  the  present  one.  If 
for  every  family  where  the  parents  are  weak,  inefficient, 
shiftless,  improvident,  lazy,  foolish,  in  fact  everj'-thing  short 
of  downright  vicious,  a  wise,  kind,  patient  friend  could  be 
found,  who  would  undertake  the  task  of  seeing  that  the 
children  were  trained  so  that  they  should  grow  up  without 


274  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

these  faults  and  with  the  contrary  virtues,  you  can  see 
what  a  tremendous  moral  force  it  would  be  in  the  com- 
munity. Of  course  to  achieve  such  results  requires  the 
charity  which  beareth  all  things,  endureth  all  things, 
hopeth  all  things;  and  equally,  of  course,  the  moral  ob- 
jects to  be  attained  must  be  constantly  kept  in  view,  and 
striven  for.  If  people  who  want  to  do  good  would  give 
up  some  of  the  many  varieties  of  charities  upon  which 
they  expend  time  and  strength,  and  would  each  concen- 
trate their  force  upon  one  family,  they  would  accomplish 
a  great  deal  more  than  they  can  by  their  present  scattering 
manner  of  working. 

Of  course  the  care  of  a  family,  where  the  parents  can 
work  and  won't  work,  or  where,  though  they  work,  they 
squander  what  they  earn,  involves  a  constant  attempt 
to  induce  them  to  do  their  duty,  a  constant  struggle, 
I  may  say,  to  make  the  father  support  the  family,  and  to 
make  the  mother  care  for  them  properly,  and,  also  ac- 
companying this,  an  unfaltering  devotion  to  the  work  of 
developing  the  children  individually,  educating  them  for 
life  by  personal  influence,  seeing  that  they  go  to  school, 
seeing  that  they  go  to  church,  seeing,  when  they  are  old 
enough,  that  they  learn  to  work,  seeing  that  they  get 
work,  seeing  that  they  keep  it,  seeing,  as  a  whole,  as  I 
have  said,  that  they  grow  up  entirely  different  from 
their  parents. 

Of  course  it  is  of  paramount  importance  that,  in  such 
work  as  this,  religious  influence  should  be  brought  to  bear, 
and  therefore  each  person  should  choose  a  family  to  care 
for  of  the  same  reUgious  faith  as  her  own,  and  this  makes 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         275 

such  educating  work  peculiarly  fitting  for  church  mem- 
bers. 

The  want  of  such  work  thirty  years  ago  we  are  seeing 
now  in  the  people  appljnng  for  help  to  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society.  We  are  coming  across  an  appalling  number 
of  young  couples,  quite  unfit  to  bring  up  children,  who 
will  grow  up  equally  unfit  for  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  life  unless  some  one  takes  them  in  hand.  I  will  give 
you  a  few  examples  to  show  you  the  kind  of  people  I 

mean.  .  .  . 

[The  examples  are  omitted.] 

.  .  .  Whether  it  would  be  possible  to  find  friends  who 
could  hope  against  hope  in  these  particular  cases  and  follow 
the  families  round  as  thej^  are  dispossessed  from  one  place 
to  another,  and  whether,  if  such  could  be  found,  they  could 
save  these  children,  are  questions  which  only  experience 
can  answer.  Naturally  one  longs  to  take  those  poor  little 
children  away ;  but  is  it  right  to  leave  the  parents  ab- 
solutely free  to  live  as  they  choose  by  reheving  them  of  the 
children  as  fast  as  they  are  born,  and  putting  them  in 
institutions  at  a  cost  to  the  taxpayers  of  New  York  of  one 
hundred  and  four  dollars  a  year  for  each  child,  and  then 
permitting  the  parents  to  take  them  home  again  and  make 
slaves  of  them  as  soon  as  they  are  of  an  age  to  earn  ?  Is  not 
such  a  course  as  likely  as  any  other  to  drive  the  children 
into  early  loveless  marriages,  like  those  of  their  parents, 
just  to  escape  the  tyranny  at  home  ?  The  whole  problem 
is  one  of  human  weakness  and  human  vice.  What  is 
needed  is  better  education  of  every  kind. 

I  should  personally  be  glad  if  we  could  have  a  law  by 


276  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

which,  when  parents  had  proved  themselves  entirely  in- 
competent to  care  properly  for  their  children,  the  children 
might  be  taken  from  them  and  given  to  other  people  to 
bring  up,  and  by  which  the  parents  themselves  should  be 
subjected  to  a  thorough  course  of  education  and  not  al- 
lowed to  continue  to  produce  children  whom  others  must 
care  for.  I  should  like  to  have  two  large  farms  bought, 
one  for  men  and  one  for  women,  and  on  these  farms  I 
should  like  to  have  such  poor  creatures  as  I  have  depressed 
you  by  describing  shut  up  for  one,  two,  five,  or  ten  years, 
as  might  prove  necessary,  to  train  and  fit  them  for  normal 
life,  and  when  they  were  prepared  for  liberty,  I  would 
return  their  children  to  them,  but  not  before. 

I  have  not  kept  to  my  subject,  but  I  hope  you  will  for- 
give me,  and  I  hope  you  will  feel  with  me,  how  great  is  our 
responsibility  to  try  to  mould  the  children  while  we  may, 
and  not  let  them  grow  up,  as  we  have  their  parents,  without 
a  helping  hand  to  guide  them. 

Report  upon  the  Care  of  Dependent  Children  in 
THE  City  of  New  York  and  Elsewhere  ^ 

To  THE  State  Board  of  Charities: 

In  a  report  upon  institutions  for  the  care  of  destitute 
children  of  the  City  of  New  York,  presented  to  the  Board 
in  January,  1886,  I  made  the  following  suggestions : 

^^  First.  Some  means  should  be  provided  by  which  the 
responsibility  for  all  admissions  to  all  institutions  de- 
pending in  whole  or  in  part  on  the  public  funds  for  support 

1  This  Report,  dated  December  10,  1889,  of  75  printed  pages,  was 
included  in  the  23d  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Board.  Extracts  only 
are  given. 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         277 

should  be  placed  where  it  can  be  adequately  discharged ; 
no  pubHc  money  should  be  spent  except  for  the  good  of  the 
community,  that  is,  in  cases  where  it  is  a  necessity  that 
parents  should  be  reUeved  of  the  care  of  their  children. 

''Second.  It  should  be  made  the  duty  of  some  city 
oflficial  to  remove  children  from  an  institution  when  they 
are  Ukely  to  suffer  in  health  or  character  by  being  longer 
retained,  and  such  official  should  also  have  the  power  to 
guard  the  pubUc  treasury,  by  placing  dependent  children 
in  places  where  they  may  be  self-supporting  as  soon  as 
they  are  old  enough  to  work." 

Since  that  date  no  change  has  been  made  in  relation  to 
these  matters.  New  York  City  supports  an  average 
population  of  about  fourteen  thousand  boys  and  girls,^atan 
expense  of  one  and  one  half  million  dollars  annually,  in 
institutions  controlled  by  private  individuals.  That  is, 
one  of  the  most  important  of  the  duties  of  the  city,  that 
of  the  care  of  its  dependent  children,  has  been  delegated  to 
persons  who  are  not  personally  designated  by  law  to  exercise 
it,  but  have  voluntarily  undertaken  it.  Were  the  question 
simply  one  of  pubUc  expenditm-e,  this  would  show  a  strange 
carelessness  on  the  part  of  the  people  in  regard  to  their  own 
interests ;  but  not  only  is  the  spending  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  of  the  public  money  yearly  left  to  the 
discretion  of  a  large  number  of  practically  unknown  per- 
sons, but  the  education  and  training  of  an  increasing  num- 
ber (about  fourteen  thousand,  as  I  have  said,  at  any  given 

^  Owing  to  the  changes  of  population  in  the  institutions,  the  number 
of  individuals  yearly  coming  under  their  care  is  much  greater  than 
fourteen  thousand,  that  being  the  average  number  supported  at  any 
given  time. 


278  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

date)  of  the  future  men  and  women  of  New  York  is  placed 
in  their  hands,  so  that  they  may  carry  out  all  their  own  views 
concerning  them,  and  there  is  even  no  inquiry  made  as  to 
what  these  views  may  be.  There  is  no  official  of  New 
York  City  who  knows,  or  has  the  right  to  know,  whether 
thousands  of  children  are  being  trained  in  idleness  or 
industry,  in  virtue  or  vice. 

'  As  to  the  selection  of  the  children  who  are  to  be  sup- 
ported by  the  public,  in  a  certain  number  of  the  institutions 
this  also  is  left  absolutely  to  the  decision  of  private  per- 
sons, who  have  the  right  to  receive  as  many  as  they  wish, 
with  the  right  to  demand,  also,  the  public  money  for  their 
maintenance,  which  rights  have  been  conferred  upon  them 
by  the  Legislature.  The  city  authorities  can  control 
neither  children  nor  money.  The  admissions  to  certain 
other  institutions  are  made  nominally  by  the  magistrates 
of  the  city,  but  these  gentlemen  have  neither  the  time  nor 
the  facilities  for  making  a  personal  inquiry  into  the  cir- 
cumstances of  each  case,  and  a  practice  has  grown  up  by 
which  the  entire  responsibility  for  the  investigation  as 
to  the  facts  is  placed  by  them  upon  the  officers  of  a  private 
society,  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Children. 

As  to  the  length  of  time  during  which  children  shall  be 
retained  as  dependents  upon  the  city,  this  is  a  matter 
which  is  also  practically  left  entirely  to  private  persons. 
The  Consolidation  Act  of  1884,  Chapter  438,  Section  4, 
reads  as  follows : 

'^  While  any  child  which  shall  have  been  placed  in  such 
asylum,  or  other  institution,  as  a  pauper,  in  pursuance 


WORK   FOR  DEPENDENT   CHILDREN  279 

of  the  second  section  of  this  act,  shall  remain  therein  at 
the  expense  of  the  county  or  town  to  which  such  pauper 
child  is  chargeable,  the  superintendents  of  the  poor  of 
such  county  or  the  overseer  of  the  poor  of  such  town, 
may,  in  their  discretion,  remove  such  child  from  such 
asylum  or  other  institution  and  place  such  child  in 
some  other  such  institution,  or  make  such  other  disposition 
of  such  child  as  shall  then  be  provided  by  law.  The  name 
of  no  such  child  shall  be  changed  while  in  such  institution, 
as  in  this  section  aforesaid.  But  no  parent  of  such  pauper 
child,  so  in  such  asylum  or  other  institution  as  in  this 
section  aforesaid,  shall  be  entitled  to  the  custody  thereof, 
except  in  pursuance  of  a  judgment  or  order  of  a  court  or 
judicial  officer  of  competent  jurisdiction,  adjudging  or  de- 
termining that  the  interest  of  such  child  will  be  promoted 
thereby,  and  that  such  parent  is  fit,  competent  and  able 
to  duly  maintain,  support  and  educate  such  child.'' 

The  Commissioners  of  PubUc  Charities  and  Correction 
would,  under  this  act,  probably  have  the  right  to  remove 
children  supported  by  the  city  from  institutions  to  which 
they  have  been  committed,  but  practically  such  a  course 
would  be  quite  out  of  the  question,  as  the  Commissioners 
of  Public  Charities  and  Correction  have  too  many  other 
duties  to  be  able  to  give  any  time  or  thought  to  this 
subject.  As  a  fact,  there  is  no  one  who  is  able  to  protect 
the  child  or  the  public.  Even  though  the  fife  in  the  insti- 
tution may  be  unfitting  him  for  future  self-support, 
even  though  there  may  be  a  good  home  available  for  him 
among  strangers;  there  is  no  one  except  the  managers 
of  the  institution  in  which  he  is,  empowered  to  find  such 
a  home  and  put  him  into  it.    The  interests  of  the  child 


280  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  of  the  city  are  left  unreservedly  in  the  hands  of 
persons  who  are,  as  a  rule,  all  of  them  benevolent  and 
desirous  of  doing  right,  but  many  of  whom  have  not  the 
knowledge  which  would  enable  them  to  judge  what  those 
interests  are,  while  some  of  them  do  not  think  it  their 
duty  to  inquire. 

Almost  all  the  institutions  in  which  these  children  are 
housed  are  far  too  large  to  allow  of  any  individual  love  or 
oversight  being  bestowed  upon  the  mass  of  the  inmates, 
and  they  suffer  from  the  many  evils,  physical,  mental  and 
moral,  which  are  known  to  affect  children  congregated 
in  large  masses.  .  .  . 

That  any  community  should  subject  thousands  of  the 
children  upon  whom  its  future  virtue  and  prosperity  are  to 
depend  to  influences  which  are  almost  sure  to  have  such 
results,  is  an  anomaly,  but  this  anomaly  exists  in  the  City 
of  New  York,  where  there  are  fourteen  child-caring  insti- 
tutions with  more  than  three  hundred  inmates  each,  eleven 
of  which  have  more  than  five  hundred,  and  two  of  these 
latter  more  than  one  thousand  each.  The  actual  proof  of 
these  evils  and  the  effects  of  the  artificial  training  upon  the 
character  and  success  in  after  life  of  the  children  cannot  be 
very  readily  traced  with  us,  because  usually  there  is  no 
one  to  follow  them  up  after  they  leave  the  institutions, 
and  inquire  into  their  failure  or  success. 

The  physical  evils  of  the  congregation  of  large  masses  of 
children  have  been  so  marked  as  to  attract  the  attention 
of  physicians  and  others,  and  as  a  consequence  there  has 
been  much  improvement  in  this  direction ;  but  it  is  pitiful 
to  see  the  drooping,  spiritless  look  of  a  child  whom  one  has 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         281 

known  outside  of  an  institution,  after  a  few  months' 
detention. 

In  regard  to  ophthalmia,  which  formerly  worked  such 
havoc  in  several  of  the  institutions  of  New  York,  per- 
manently injuring  hundreds  of  children,  besides  blinding 
many,  there  has  been  a  very  marked  improvement  since 
my  last  report  to  you,  which  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the 
passage  of  Chapter  633,  Laws  of  1886,  entitled  ''An  Act 
for  the  better  preservation  of  the  health  of  children  in 
institutions,^'  a  copy  of  which  is  appended.  This  law  was 
widely  circulated  among  the  officers  of  the  institutions  by 
the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  and 
has  been  enforced  by  the  Board  of  Health  of  New  York, 
over  such  institutions  as  come  under  its  authority.  By 
constant  and  efficient  inspection,  that  Board  has  checked 
ophthalmia  to  a  remarkable  degree,  and  the  inspector  has 
also  effected  many  other  improvements  in  the  institutions, 
most  beneficial  to  the  health  and  general  welfare  of  the 
children.  These  reach  directly,  however,  only  children  in 
institutions  within  the  city  itself,  and  New  York  taxpayers 
support  many  thousands  of  children  outside  its  own  lim- 
its. ... 

The  children  from  certain  institutions  attend  the  pub- 
lic schools.  .  .  .  This,  no  doubt,  does  a  great  deal  to 
counteract  the  dulling  influences  of  institution  life,  and 
it  is  greatly  to  be  desired  that  all  the  institutions  in  the 
city  should  send  their  children  to  the  public  schools,  in 
order  that  they  might  associate  with  those  differently 
situated.  In  the  other  institutions  supported  by  public 
money,  the  children  receive  such  schooling  as  the  authori- 


282  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ties  think  best,  and  there  are  no  examinations  by  any 
city  officers.  ... 

I  would  not  be  understood,  however,  as  recommending 
for  New  York  City  the  method  adopted  in  any  of  these 
counties.  The  problem  in  New  York  is  too  serious  to  be 
so  disposed  of  and  the  difficulties  are  too  great.  There 
must  be  a  new  department  created  to  have  charge  of  the 
fourteen  thousand  children  now  dependent  on  the  City  of 
New  York,  to  see  that  they  are  cared  for  and  educated  in 
the  way  best  for  the  community  and  best  for  them ;  to  see 
that  the  money  of  the  taxpayers  is  expended  for  the  care  of 
dependent  children  only  when  it  is  necessary  so  to  expend 
it,  and  to  save  the  community  from  the  disgrace  of  having 
one  child  in  every  one  hundred  of  its  population  deserted 
by  its  parents  and  relatives,  and  a  pauper,  dependent  on 
public  support.  .  .  . 

Of  the  twenty-nine  institutions  receiving  public  money 
for  the  support  of  New  York  children,  I  visited  seventeen 
in  April  and  May.  Seven  of  these  have  two  buildings  in 
different  localities,  and  I  therefore  present  twenty-four 
reports  of  inspections.  I  have  not  been  able  to  inspect 
the  remaining  twelve  institutions  this  yeaxj  but  I  present 
the  statistics  for  all.  .  .  . 

Another  point  in  regard  to  the  future  of  our  fourteen 
thousand  dependent  children  which  causes  anxiety  is  that 
where  industrial  training  is  carried  on,  and  the  effort  to 
give  them  at  least  some  means  of  earning  a  livelihood  is 
made,  the  teaching  is  such,  both  for  boys  and  girls,  as  will 
inevitably  lead  them  to  seek  employment  in  the  city. 
The  influx  from  the  country  to  the  city  which  goes  on  in 
this,  as  in  other  countries,  is  a  subject  of  regret  to  students 


WORK  FOR  DEPENDENT  CHILDREN         283 

of  social  phenomena ;  the  need  of  agricultural  laborers  and 
of  women  to  help  in  housework  is  recognized  and  deplored, 
not  only  by  those  who  suffer  directly  from  the  want  of 
them,  but  by  all  thoughtful  persons.  Yet,  here  we  have 
the  anomaly  of  fourteen  thousand  boys  and  girls,  supported 
and  educated  by  the  public,  and  scarcely  an  effort  made  to 
fit  them  for  country  life ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  scarcely  one 
hundred  boys  of  all  the  eight  thousand,  even  where  they 
are  brought  up  in  the  country  on  a  farm,  are  given  the 
inestimable  blessing  of  the  good  healthy  body  and  mind, 
and  the  safe  future,  which  a  thorough  scientific  training  in 
farm  work  would  go  far  to  assure  to  them. 

Surely  our  communism  is,  of  all  the  communisms  ever 
dreamed  of  by  social  reformers,  the  most  foolish  and  un- 
reasonable. 

We  take  children  from  their  parents  and  support  them 
at  public  expense,  not  to  bring  them  up  to  be  useful  and 
happy  citizens,  but  to  stint  and  cramp  them,  and  to  return 
them  at  the  end  of  five  or  six  years  to  work  for  those  who 
would  not  work  for  them,  to  be  the  support  of  those  who 
ignored  all  duties  and  responsibilities  toward  them  when 
they  were  helpless  and  dependent. 

Is  it  not  time  that  the  interests  of  the  public,  and  the  in- 
terests of  these  fourteen  thousand  children,  were  intrusted 
to  the  care  of  some  responsible  man,  or  men,  in  New  York 
City,  to  see  to  it,  not  only  that  one  and  one  half  million 
dollars  of  the  taxpayers'  money  is  not  worse  than  wasted 
every  year,  but  to  study  the  whole  question,  to  devise 
means  to  save  parents  from  the  temptation  to  desert  their 
children,  and  to  save  the  children  from  a  life  of  dependence, 
not  only  now,  but  in  the  future  ? 


CHAPTER  XII 

Special    Investigations    for   the    State    Board    op 

Charities 

One  of  the  most  important  obligations  devolved  upon 
the  State  Board  of  Charities  by  statute  is  that  of  investi- 
gating the  affairs  and  management  of  any  institution, 
society,  or  association,  subject  to  the  general  supervision 
of  the  Board,  when  this  seems  necessary  to  protect  the 
public  or  individuals  from  wrong.  Such  an  investigation 
is  of  comparatively  rare  occurrence,  and  is  usually  under- 
taken by  a  special  committee  appointed  by  the  Board  as 
best  qualified  to  make  the  particular  examination.  The 
history  of  two  investigations  is  interesting  to  follow  in 
some  detail,  as  a  large  share  of  the  credit  for  the  sub- 
stantial results  obtained  is  due  to  Mrs.  Lowell. 

In  1872  Professor  Theodore  W.  Dwight,  Vice-President 
of  the  Board,  had  made  a  report  adverse  to  the  worthi- 
ness and  management  of  the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian 
Society,  a  private  outdoor  relief  organization  of  New  York 
City;  but  notwithstanding  this  unfavorable  report,  the 
society  had  not  been  deprived  of  its  incorporation,  and  it 
continued  to  collect  money  from  the  public.  In  1877, 
when  Mrs.  Lowell  had  but  recently  been  appointed  a  Com- 
missioner, she  was  associated  with  Commissioners  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt  and  Henry  L.  Hoguet  as  the  third  member 

284 


SPECIAL  INVESTIGATIONS  285 

of  a  special  committee  of  three  to  make  an  investigation 
and  report  upon  the  affairs  and  management  of  this  society. 
The  store  of  information  respecting  the  private  charities 
operating  in  the  city  and  general  experience  in  philan- 
thropic work  which  Mrs.  Lowell  brought  with  her,  made 
her  a  valuable  help  to  her  colleagues,  both  men  of  well- 
known  standing  and  ability,  and  her  influence  was  con- 
stantly felt  and  appreciated  in  their  common  work.  Her 
brother-in-law  and  intimate  friend,  General  Francis  C. 
Barlow,  acted  as  counsel  to  the  committee,  brought 
into  the  controversy  no  doubt  by  her  interest  and  influence 
and  aided  by  her  suggestions  and  special  knowledge. 

A  summary  of  the  proceedings  of  this  special  committee 
is  given  in  the  text  of  the  Eleventh  Annual  Report  of  the 
Board,  transmitted  to  the  Legislature  January  17,  1878, 
in  the  following  words : 

"In  February  last  a  committee  of  the  Board,  com- 
posed of  Commissioners  Roosevelt,  Hoguet,  and  Lowell, 
was  appointed  to  inquire  into  and  examine  the  affairs  of 
the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian  Society,  in  the  City  of 
New  York,  Lq  the  management  of  which  great  abuses 
were  believed  to  exist.  The  committee  soon  thereafter 
visited  and  inspected  the  buildings  of  the  society,  and 
examined  .  .  .  several  of  its  officers  and  other  persons. 

''The  officers  of  the  society  objected  to  the  examination, 
denied  the  right  of  the  committee  to  subpoena  witnesses,  de- 
manded that  specific  charges  be  made  against  the  society, 
and  claimed  the  privilege  of  being  present  if  the  investiga- 
tion was  continued,  and  the  right  of  appearing  by  counsel, 
cross-examining  the  witnesses,  and  producing  and  examin- 
ing witnesses  on  their  own  behalf. 


286  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

"The  committee  overruled  these  objections,  continued 
the  investigation,  and  reported  the  testimony  and  facts 
regarding  the  matter  to  the  Board,  March  8,  1877.  The 
society  thereupon  brought  an  action  against  the  com- 
mittee, requesting  the  court  by  injunction  to  restrain  the 
committee  from  pubHshing  their  report.  The  matter 
came  up  before  Hon.  Charles  P.  Daly,  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Court  of  Common  Pleas,  June  15,  1877,  .  .  .  and  he  de- 
livered an  elaborate  opinion  upon  the  matter,  fully  sustain- 
ing the  position  of  the  committee. '^ 

Chief  Justice  Daly's  interpretation  of  the  powers  and 
duties  of  the  Board,  in  cases  of  special  investigation,  still 
guides  the  committees  of  the  Board  charged  with  such 
responsible  inquiries ;  and  since  his  opinion  was  delivered^ 
the  powers  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  in  making 
investigations  have  never  been  successfully  questioned^ 
while  all  those  it  has  undertaken  have  been  satisfactorily 
concluded. 

The  proceedings  in  the  case  were  reported  by  the  Board 
to  the  Attorney-General,  and  while  the  investigation  did 
not  lead  to  the  immediate  annulment  of  the  charter  of 
the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian  Society,  it  had  far-reach- 
ing results,  as  it  was  not  only  a  strong  link  in  a  chain  of 
attacks  against  the  society,  but  also  firmly  established 
the  Board's  power  of  investigation. 

Soon  after  the  completion  of  the  work  of  the  special 
committee,  the  sudden  death  of  Theodore  Roosevelt,^ 
its  chairman,  occurred,  and  at  the  first  meeting  held  there- 
after, 2  the  Board  adopted  a  resolution  of  regret  and  appre- 

'  February  7,  1878.  «  March  14,  1878. 


SPECIAL  INVESTIGATIONS  287 

elation  of  his  services,  while  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell, 
dated  February  12,  1878,  and  addressed  to  Dr.  Charles  S. 
Hoyt,  Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  expressed 
her  deep  grief  at  the  loss  of  her  valued  colleague. 

^^  .  .  I  went  yesterday  to  Mr.  Roosevelt^s  funeral. 
His  death  is  an  incalculable  loss  to  this  city,  and  indeed 
to  our  work  all  over  the  State.  He  gave  his  whole  time 
almost  to  matters  connected  with  the  duties  of  the  Board, 
and  his  place  cannot  be  filled. 

"To  me  the  loss  is  a  personal  one, — he  was  ready  to  ad- 
vise and  assist  me  always,  and  my  efforts  to  improve  the 
condition  of  things  here  will  lose  more  than  half  their 
efficacy.  ..." 

That  Mrs.  Lowell  was  determined  to  put  an  end  to  the 

society  condemned  by  the  report  of  the  special  committee, 

was  manifest  from  the  close  attention  she  gave  to  all  its 

proceedings.     The  following  letter  shows  this  watchful- 

ness  I 

April  29,  1878. 
Dear  Dr.  Hoyt: 

From  what  Mr.  Devereaux  writes  me,  there  seems  still 
to  be  some  danger  of  the  passage  of  the  bill  amending  the 
charter  of  the  Juvenile  Guardian  Society,  which  would  be 
a  direct  insult  to  the  Board.  Certainly  you  ought  to  be 
able  to  prevent  the  passage  of  any  such  bill,  even  if  Mr. 
Fanning  cannot.  You  were  acquainted  with  the  char- 
acter of  that  society  long  before  Mr.  Fanning  was  con- 
nected with  the  Board,  and  if  there  is  the  slightest  danger 
that  the  bill  will  go  through,  you  should  make  an  official 
statement  of  the  facts  to  the  Legislature.  I  hope  no  such 
thing  will  be  necessary,  but  I  am  disappointed  that  the 
matter  is  not  yet  settled. 


288  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

''This  matter/'  in  the  words  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  was  not 
settled  for  many  years,  and  was  the  cause  of  much  con- 
troversy and  violent  refutations  by  the  society.  In 
July,  1885,  it  published  a  small  pamphlet  entitled  ''Needed 
Exposures  of  Base  Insinuations  and  Brazen  Falsehoods," 
in  which  it  related  with  gusto  the  "thirteen  defeats" 
of  its  base  accusers,  namely,  a  city  commission  "falsely 
claiming  to  be  the  State  Board  of  Charities,"  and  alluded 
to  Mrs.  Lowell  as  publishing  falsehoods  and  defamation 
against  it.  It  was  not  until  1894  that  the  committee  of 
the  State  Board  of  Charities,  and  especially  Mrs.  Lowell, 
were  vindicated  in  their  attack  on  the  New  York  Juvenile 
Guardian  Society,  by  a  judgment  given  August  1  of  that 
year  by  the  Supreme  Court,  annulling  the  corporate  rights 
of  the  society,  and  thus  ending  this  long  battle,  in  which 
Mrs.  Lowell,  acting  in  the  interest  of  justice  and  honesty, 
was  one  of  the  chief  participants. 

The  second  special  investigation  with  which  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  connected  was  ordered  by  the  Board  at  its 
meeting,  December  11, 1883,  to  inquire  into  the  affairs  and 
management  of  the  New  York  Infant  Asylum,  an  impor- 
tant semi-public  institution,  incorporated  in  1865  for  the 
care  of  foundlings,  and  other  infant  children  under  two 
years  of  age.  For  several  years  prior  to  this  action  of  the 
Board,  there  had  been  discord  and  contention  in  the  board 
of  managers,  and  an  inquiry  in  1879  by  three  New  York 
Commissioners  of  the  State  Board  had  brought  to  light 
defects  of  importance.  This  led  the  Board  to  address  a 
communication  to  the  board  of  managers,  recommend- 
ing reformed  methods,  but  no  action  was  taken ;  the  strife 


SPECIAL  INVESTIGATIONS  289 

among  the  managers  increased,  and  new  and  serious  evils 
of  administration  appeared. 

Under  these  circumstances,  on  October  16, 1883,  written 
charges  were  presented  to  me  as  the  Commissioner  of  the 
First  Judicial  District,  in  which  the  institution  is  situated, 
alleging  grave  mismanagement  of  the  New  York  Infant 
Asylum;  the  complaint  was  signed  by  two  members  of 
the  board  of  managers,  Theodore  Roosevelt,^  son  of  the 
former  Commissioner  of  the  State  Board,  and  as  such  well 
informed  respecting  its  work  and  powers,  and  Theodore 
Kane  Gibbs,  a  retired  army  officer,  well  known  for  his 
philanthropic  work  in  the  city. 

The  principal  cause  of  contention  seems  then  to  have 
been  the  illegal  election,  ''by  a  most  unscrupulous  device," 
of  a  large  number  of  additional  managers,  who  then  ''pro- 
ceeded to  deprive  the  medical  members  of  the  board  of 
a  participation  in  the  medical  management  of  the  asylum. '* 
Then  followed  charges  that  undue  and  absolute  authority 
was  conferred  upon  the  president  of  the  board  of  managers, 
and  that  he  had  appointed  to  take  charge  of  the  country 
branch  a  physician  "who  has  just  been  declared  by  a 
Coroner's  jury  incompetent  to  perform  the  duties  required 
of  a  physician  in  charge  of  such  an  institution." 

At  the  request  of  the  New  York  Commissioners  of  the 
State  Board,  supplementary  charges  were  submitted  in 
detail,  covering  nine  pages  of  closely  written  manuscript, 
in  the  forcible  English  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  and  bearing  his 
signature.  It  was  alleged  that  the  change  of  medical 
control  was  followed  by  a  rapid  and  marked  increase  in 
^  Then  twenty-five  years  old,  member  of  Assembly. 


290  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  death  rate  among  the  infants,  due  in  part  to  the 
spread  of  an  epidemic  of  measles,  which  should  have  been 
controlled ;  and  extracts  from  the  verdicts  of  the  Coroners' 
juries,  censuring  the  management  of  the  Asylum,  were 
quoted.  The  financial  management  of  the  Asylum  was 
also  complained  of,  and  among  other  things  the  state- 
ment made  that  the  funds  of  the  institution  were  kept  with 
a  business  firm  of  which  the  Treasurer  was  a  member, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  in  1879  the  State  Board 
of  Charities  had  requested  the  discontinuance  of  this 
practice.  In  view  of  the  number  and  the  serious  char- 
acter of  these  charges,  the  State  Board  appointed  a  special 
committee  of  investigation  composed  of  Commissioners 
Stewart,  chairman,  Lowell  and  Milhau,  the  latter  being 
an  ex-surgeon-general  of  the  regular  army,  whose  medical 
knowledge  proved  of  great  value. 

Concerning  such  requests  for  investigation  from  in- 
stitutions throughout  the  State,  Mrs.  Lowell  wished  the 
Board's  position  to  be  well  understood,  as  appears  from 
a  letter  written  about  that  time : 

120  East  30th  St.,  October  12,  1883. 

My  dear  Mr.  Stewart  : 

Will  you  allow  me,  as  an  older  member  of  the  Board 
than  yourself,  to  make  one  or  two  suggestions  in  regard 
to  the  investigation  you  are  about  to  undertake,  or  rather 
in  regard  to  the  general  question  of  investigations  of  private 
charities?  I  think  it  quite  important  that  we  should 
always  adopt,  and  keep  to,  the  position  that  no  society 
has  a  right  to  demand  an  investigation,  and  that  we  never 
undertake  one  for  the  purpose  of  clearing  a  society  that 


SPECIAL  INVESTIGATIONS  291 

has  been  attacked.  That  is  theu-  own  office.  We  under- 
take investigations  when  we  consider  them  necessary  to 
protect  helpless  persons  from  injury  or  the  public  from 
fraud.  That  is  what  we  have  always  asserted,  and  we  even 
went  so  far  as  to  refuse  to  investigate,  except  in  a  very 
superficial  manner,  charges  made  against  so  important 

an  institution  as   the   .     You  will  see  that  if   we 

were  to  place  ourselves  at  the  call  of  any  society  that  was 
attacked,  we  might  spend  all  our  time  in  defending  the 
good  name  of  one  or  another. 
»    It  seems  to  me  very  desirable  to  explain  this  to  the 

persons  composing  the ,  showing  them  that  it  was 

because  the  charge  of  fraud  was  serious,  and  not  because 
they  demanded  it,  that  the  Board  appointed  a  committee 
to  make  the  inquiry. 

I  send  you  an  opinion  of  Judge  Daly  in  relation  to  om* 
rights  in  case  of  investigations,  which  will  probably  be 
useful  to  you.  .  .  . 

This  thoughtful  letter  illustrates  the  orderly  and  logical 
working  of  the  writer's  mind,  and  her  thorough  apprecia- 
tion of  the  position  the  State  Board  should  maintain 
toward  the  public,  and  the  charitable  institutions  in  the 
State.  Experienced  in  committee  work,  and  familiar  with 
the  broad  principle  underlying  it,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  desirous 
that  precedents  should  be  followed  by  her  colleagues,  and 
the  investigations  kept  within  proper  bounds.  Weekly 
sessions  of  the  committee  were  held  for  four  months,  at 
my  private  office,  the  State  Board  not  then  having  an 
office  in  New  York  City.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  regular  in  her 
attendance  at  the  meetings,  and  took  part  in  the  examina- 
tion of  witnesses.  Her  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
Asylum,  and  her  long  and  varied  experience  in  the  man- 


292  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

agement  of  private  charitable  institutions,  were  very 
helpfuL  Mr.  Roosevelt  gave  testimony,  and  followed 
the  course  of  the  investigation  closely;  and  with  the 
able  cooperation  of  Dr.  Henry  D.  NicoU,  formerly  of  the 
medical  board,  actively  led  the  contest  of  the  minority 
members  of  the  board,  for  a  thorough  reformation  of  the 
affairs  and  management  of  the  Asylum. 

Coincidently  with  the  examination  by  the  State  Board, 
the  publication  of  the  charges  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr. 
Gibbs  in  the  New  York  Tribune  began  a  newspaper  con- 
troversy of  much  acrimony,  between  the  managers  of  the 
Asylum  and  the  two  complainants,  which  gave  publicity 
to  the  matter,  and  awakened  general  interest.  Mean- 
while the  special  committee  was  carrying  on  the  investiga- 
tion, and  finally  presented  its  report,  which  was  adopted 
by  the  Board  December  16,  1884.  It  appeared  therein 
that  the  charges  were  in  general  well  founded,  and  it  con- 
cluded with  these  words:  ^'Your  Committee  is  of  the 
opinion  that  Messrs.  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Theodore 
Kane  Gibbs,  in  calling  the  attention  of  the  State  Board 
of  Charities  to  the  mismanagement  of  the  New  York 
Infant  Asylum,  have  performed  a  public  duty.^' 

It  is  pleasant,  while  noting  Mrs.  LowelFs  activity  as  a 
member  of  this  investigating  committee,  to  find  her  as- 
sociated with  one,  who,  like  herself,  so  often  showed  his 
fearlessness  of  public  opinion  and  his  courage  when  fighting 
for  justice  and  equity.  Theodore  Roosevelt  must  then 
have  realized,  if  never  before,  the  importance  of  having 
only  high-minded,  unselfish,  and  experienced  men  and 
women  on  the  boards  of  State  charitable  institutions; 


SPECIAL  INVESTIGATIONS  293 

and  later  when  as  Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York,  it 
became  his  duty  to  appoint  managers  of  these  institutions, 
he  secured  the  services  of  many  such,  unusually  well 
qualified  by  training  and  inclination  for  their  positions. 

It  should  be  said  in  conclusion,  that  the  New  York 
Infant  Asylum  has,  ever  since  the  State  Board's  investiga- 
tion, been  under  an  harmonious  administration,  managers 
and  officers  all  laboring  together  for  the  success  of  their 
humane  work. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
Work  to  Improve  the  Condition  of  the  Almshouses 

It  will  be  remembered  that  when  Mrs.  Lowell  was  a 
young  woman  her  sympathetic  interest  was  given  to  the 
inmates  of  the  Richmond  County  Poorhouse,  as  it  was 
then  called,  not  far  from  her  father's  home  on  Staten 
Island,  and  that  it  was  her  report  on  ^^ Adult  Able-bodied 
Paupers''  which  led  to  her  appointment  in  1876  by 
Governor  Tilden  as  the  first  woman  commissioner  on  the 
State  Board  of  Charities.  At  that  time  the  State  Board 
had  not,  as  now,  an  organized  Department  of  State  and 
Alien  Poor  with  inspectors  whose  duty  it  is  to  keep  the 
county  almshouses  under  systematic  and  thorough  in- 
spection. The  commissioners  of  the  Board  were  then 
required  to  make  reports  upon  the  conditions  in  the  alms- 
houses of  their  respective  judicial  districts,  which  usually 
include  several  counties.  Serving  without  salary,  and 
some  of  them  men  of  large  affairs,  they  found  it  practically 
impossible  personally  to  make  the  frequent  and  careful 
inspections  necessary  to  insure  the  welfare  of  the  inmates 
of  these  numerous  institutions. 

The  Legislature  of  1873  recognized  this  condition,  and 
provided  a  measure  of  relief  by  conferring  upon  the  State 
Board  power  to  designate  for  the  several  counties  visitors 
*'of  all  poorhouses  and  other  institutions  in  said  county 
subject  to  the  visitation  of  the  said  Board  under  the  said 

294 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      295 

act,  in  aid  of  and  as  a  representative  of  the  Board,  except 
such  institutions  as  have  a  board  of  managers  appointed 
by  the  State/'  The  records  show  Mrs.  LowelFs  im- 
mediate and  useful  exercise  of  the  power  of  selection  and 
nomination  of  visitors  under  the  act.  On  December  5, 
1876,  the  Board  designated  as  visitors  for  New  York 
County,  on  Commissioner  LowelFs  nomination.  Miss 
Ellen  M.  Collins,  Dr.  W.  Gill  Wylie,  Mr.  Temple  Prime, 
and  Mr.  Henry  E.  Pellew. 

Early  appreciation  by  the  Board  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  knowl- 
edge of  almshouses  was  shown  by  the  adoption,  January 
12,  1877,  of  a  resolution  requesting  all  the  county  visiting 
committees  in  the  State  to  send  their  reports  to  her,  and 
asking  her  to  forward  duplicates  or  synopses  of  such  reports 
to  the  commissioner  of  the  judicial  district  in  which  the 
institution  reported  upon  was  located.  Mrs.  Lowell  thus 
became  the  State  Board's  clearing-house  for  all  reports 
on  county  charitable  institutions,  and  she  from  time  to 
time  reported  to  the  Board  upon  the  work  of  the  visitors. 
These  continued  to  render  efficient  aid  to  the  Board  until 
1896,  when  the  employment  of  salaried  inspectors  rendered 
the  further  designation  of  unpaid  visitors  not  only  un- 
necessary, but  inexpedient. 

Both  before  and  after  the  appointment  of  the  county 
visitors,  Mrs.  Lowell  took  an  active  personal  interest  in 
these  public  institutions,  and  her  official  visits  to  them, 
especially  to  that  maintained  by  the  City  of  New  York 
on  Blackwell's  Island,  early  convinced  her  that  the 
commingling  in  these  institutions  of  the  feeble-minded, 
idiotic,  and  insane,  and  the  morally  depraved  of  both  sexes, 


296  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

was  in  large  measure  responsible  for  the  great  increase 
in  numbers  of  the  defective,  dependent,  and  delinquent 
classes  for  the  public  to  protect  and  maintain.  In  January, 
1878,  she  submitted  a  report  on  pauperism  based  upon 
a  report  previously  made  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Board, 
Dr.  Hoyt,  in  which  she  pointed  out  that  ''the  State  should 
in  the  interest  of  humanity,  morality,  and  the  common 
good,  provide  separate  institutions  for  their  care ;  that  is, 
custodial  asylums  for  adult  idiots  and  the  feeble-minded 
of  each  sex,  and  reformatories  for  depraved  and  vagrant 
women."  The  Board  accepted  this  report,  and  ordered 
one  thousand  copies  printed.  During  the  following 
month,  Mrs.  Lowell  submitted  a  special  report  on  the 
Westchester  County  Poorhouse,  showing  carelessness  of 
the  local  authorities  in  the  matter  of  records.  The  facts 
ascertained  by  her  were  brought  to  the  attention  of  the 
County  Supervisors  throughout  the  State,  with  a  request 
for  the  immediate  introduction  by  them  of  a  system  of 
proper  records  of  all  inmates  of  almshouses.  During  the 
same  year  her  visits  to  the  almshouses  of  Richmond,  Rock- 
land, and  Herkimer  counties  were  also  reported. 

Much  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  best  work  was  that  intended 
to  exclude  from  the  almshouses  all  but  the  sick  and  aged 
poor,  for  whom  alone  they  are  suitable  homes.  These 
institutions  then,  as  now,  were  the  resort  of  tramps  and 
vagrants  in  large  numbers ;  and  Mrs.  Lowell  also  recom- 
mended the  establishment  of  State  labor  colonies,  to  which 
they  should  be  committed,  as  the  only  reasonable  means 
for  the  repression  of  trampery :  a  method  which  has  since 
been  approved  by  many  public  officials  and  others  en- 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      297 

gaged  in  relief  work,  and  a  reform  certain  of  accomplish- 
ment in  the  near  future. 

The  following  letters  from  the  files  of  the  Board,  re- 
lating to  the  Richmond  County  Poorhouse,  recall  the 
usual  conditions  in  such  institutions  less  than  a  generation 
ago..  Miss  Sarah  M.  Carpenter,  to  whom  one  of  the  letters 
was  addressed,  was  appointed  by  Governor  Cornell,  in 
1880,  the  second  woman  commissioner  on  the  State  Board, 
and  represented  the  second  judicial  district,  which  in- 
cludes the  county  of  Richmond.  She  was  a  faithful 
official,  and,  having  served  with  credit,  retired  in  1893. 

April  21,  1882. 
My  dear  Miss  Carpenter: 

I  was  yesterday  at  the  poorhouse,  and  am  more  than 
ever  impressed  with  the  necessity  of  removing  some,  at 
least,  of  those  inmates  I  wrote  you  of,  if  only  they  are 
insane. 

Fanny,  who  has  the  epileptic  fits,  had  been  so  impudent 
to  the  keeper  that  he  had  locked  her  up.  She  had  three 
or  four  fits  just  before,  and  of  course  the  impudence  is 
due  to  the  same  cause  that  makes  the  fits,  but,  as  the 
keeper  says,  when  she  insults  him  before  the  others,  he  has 
to  punish  her  to  maintain  discipline  whether  she  is  respon- 
sible or  not. 

I  was  at  the  poorhouse  only  a  little  while,  as  I  went 
merely  to  carry  some  books  to  the  little  library,  but  I 
talked  to  the  matron  about  having  lost  her  temper  and 
thrown  the  water  at  Margaret.  .  .  .  She  cried,  and  said 
she  was  so  tried  by  them,  etc.  The  Superintendents  had 
heard  all  about  it  and  have  given  the  keeper  the  right  to 
shut  up  the  inmates  on  bread  and  water  and  then  report 


298  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

to  the  board  each  week.  I  suppose  this  is  necessary,  as 
the  matron  says  they  do  not  care  at  all  about  being  shut 
up  if  only  they  get  their  meals. 

There  was  a  man  brought  in  some  days  before  insane. 
He  was  lying  on  the  floor  in  the  basement  cell  with  wristlets 
and  belt  on  to  be  sent  off  Tuesday.  That  cell  is  a  horrible 
place  to  keep  them. 

I  forgot  if  any  action  was  taken  on  your  report  as  to 
the  insane.  Cannot  you  get  Dr.  Hoyt  to  come  down 
and  see  these  cases  and  decide  if  they  are  insane  ? 

120  East  30th  Street,  September  25,  '82. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth: 

...  I  suddenly  discovered  yesterday  afternoon  that 
the  new  Richmond  County  Poorhouse  was  to  be  an  im- 
portant matter,  and  meeting  one  of  the  supervisors,  he 
told  me  the  plan  was  to  be  adopted  this  morning !  .  .  . 
I  begged  him  to  defer  it  until  the  next  meeting.  ...  He 
said  he  would  do  what  he  could,  and  I  said  that  I  would 
do  my  best  to  persuade  you  to  be  at  that  meeting. 

He  said  their  idea  was  to  build  two  wings,  with  a  con- 
necting building,  but  when  I  suggested  day-rooms,  etc., 
he  confessed  they  had  never  thought  of  anything  of  the 
kind.  They  seem  amenable  to  advice  and  I  hope  you 
can  be  at  the  meeting. 

West  New  Brighton,  July  4,  1885. 
Dr.  C.  S.  Hoyt. 
Dear  Sir  : 

I  have  written  to  Miss  Carpenter  to-day,  suggesting 
that  it  would  perhaps  be  useful  if  you  and  she  could  visit 
the  Richmond  County  Poorhouse  on  Wednesday,  July  8th, 
when  the  Board  of  Supervisors  is  to  meet  there  (or  a 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      299 

committee),  in  order  to  present  to  them  the  necessity  of 
putting  up  at  least  one  new  building  and  providing  for  a 
better  separation  of  the  sexes  and  more  room.  I  fear  that 
the  Supervisors  may  vote  to  spend  money  on  a  separate 
building  for  the  insane,  instead  of  remodelling  the  whole 
poorhouse.  The  Grand  Jury  has  recommended  that  the 
county  build  an  asylum.  Last  winter  the  poorhouse  was 
much  overcrowded. 

December  30,  1886. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

Have  you  ever  been  able  to  do  anything  with  our 
Richmond  County  Superintendents  of  the  Poor  ?  I  have 
never  heard  of  it  if  you  have. 

I  was  at  the  Poorhouse  last  week  and  found  five  children 
there  ranging  from  three  to  thirteen  years  of  age,  besides 
the  babies  and  the  older  children  who  were  sick.  It  is 
trying  to  have  men  in  office  who  care  so  little  to  obey 
the  laws.  .  .  . 

No  wonder  that  almshouse  discipline  and  good  order 
were  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  with  the  mixed  population 
received  under  the  operation  of  the  Poor  Laws  of  New  York 
State  as  they  were  at  that  time.  The  returns  of  the  Super- 
intendents of  the  Poor  to  the  State  Board  for  the  year 
ending  November  1, 1881,  shortly  before  Mrs.  Lowell's  let- 
ters were  written,  gave  the  whole  number  of  inmates  of  the 
fifty-eight  county  almshouses,  city  almshouses  excepted, 
on  that  date  as  6,174,  of  whom  there  were  insane,  1,754; 
idiots,  253  ;  epileptics,  171 ;  blind,  131 ;  deaf  mutes,  36 ;  chil- 
dren under  two  years  old,  129 ;  children  between  two  and 
sixteen  years,  93.  Richmond  County  Poorhouse  was  thus 
not  exceptional,  and,  because  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  watchful 


300  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

care  over  it,  probably  one  of  the  best.  After  the  letters 
quoted  were  written,  it  improved  so  much  that  before 
she  laid  down  her  work  she  was  able  to  visit  it  with  sat- 
isfaction, all  the  more  genuine  because  of  her  long 
acquaintance  with  bad  conditions  prevailing,  and  her  suc- 
cessful efforts  to  improve  them. 

In  the  chapters  relating  to  the  work  for  the  Women's 
Reformatory  and  for  a  Custodial  Asylum  for  Feeble- 
Minded  Women,  further  and  more  particular  mention  is 
made  of  the  great  reforms  which  resulted  in  the  establish- 
ment by  the  State  of  these  two  institutions  and  of  the 
assumption  by  the  State  of  the  duty  of  making  suitable 
provision  for  both  delinquent  and  feeble-minded  women, 
who  until  that  time  found  their  only  asyliun  in  the  alms- 
houses. 

Massachusetts  Paupeks 

Inspections  of  the  county  almshouses  and  other  chari- 
table institutions  in  New  York  State  made  by  the  officers 
of  the  State  Board  revealed  the  fact  that  they  maintained 
a  large  number  of  paupers  or  vagrants  who  had  no  legal 
or  moral  claim  for  support  upon  the  taxpayers  of  New 
York,  but  came  from  other  states,  many  of  them  from 
Massachusetts.  The  subject  received  the  consideration 
of  the  Board  in  1877  and  1878,  and  a  correspondence  ensued 
between  it  and  the  Board  of  Health,  Lunacy  and  Charity 
of  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  The  New  York  Board 
expressed  the  opinion  that  this  State  should  not  be  bur- 
dened with  certain  classes  of  dependent  persons  sent  from 
Massachusetts. 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      301 

Definite  action  began  when  the  New  York  Board,  at  a 
meeting  held  May  14,  1879,  requested  Commissioner 
Lowell  'Ho  inquire  into  the  facts  concerning  the  transfer 
of  paupers  from  Massachusetts  to  this  State  and  report  at 
the  next  meeting  of  the  Board."  Mrs.  Lowell  promptly 
took  up  the  work  thus  confided  to  her,  prepared  a  report 
and  addressed  a  communication  to  the  Massachusetts 
Board,  both  of  which  she  mentioned  in  the  following 
letter  to  the  President  of  the  New  York  Board. 

PoNKAPOG,  Mass.,  August  22,  1879. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

I  have  yours  with  note  to  Dr.  Folsom,^  which  I  have 
forwarded.  I  agree  with  you  that  the  Board  should  hear 
and  consider  my  report  and  appoint  a  coromittee  to  pre- 
pare a  plan  of  action  before  we  can  meet  the  Massachu- 
setts Committee.  I  shall  not  write  again  to  Dr.  Folsom, 
as  I  think  the  matter  stands  as  it  should  now. 

I  am  glad  you  thought  well  of  my  communication  to  the 
Massachusetts  Board.  I  felt  I  was  discharging  a  delicate 
ofiice,  and  was  anxious  to  say  exactly  the  right  thing. 

The  report  was  presented  and  accepted  by  the  Board 
September  10,  1879,  and  resolutions  offered  by  Mrs. 
Lowell  were  adopted,  expressing  satisfaction  at  the  appoint- 
ment by  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  a  Committee  of 
Conference,  and  inviting  a  conference  meeting  in  the 
City  of  New  York  the  following  November.  She  also 
at  this  meeting  presented  a  paper  to  serve  as  a  basis  for 
discussion,  which  was  accepted  and  a  copy  ordered  sent 

*  Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Health,  Lunacy,  and 
Charity. 


302  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

to  each  member,  and  President  Letch  worth  was  by  resolu- 
tion requested  to  prepare  a  paper  embodying  the  views 
of  the  Board. 

The  conference  in  the  City  of  New  York  between 
the  two  State  Boards  began  on  November  12,  1879, 
and  lasted  two  days.  Thus  within  six  months  from  the 
reference  to  Mrs.  Lowell  of  the  subject  of  controversy, 
during  which  period  summer  had  intervened,  she  had 
succeeded  in  bringing  about  a  conference.  It  was  quite 
characteristic  of  her  usual  attitude  that  having  by  her 
papers  and  personal  efforts  seciu-ed  the  conference,  she 
was  almost  a  silent  member ;  evidently  the  discussion  was 
going  as  she  wished,  and  so  she  reserved  her  ammunition. 
In  relation  to  what  she  thought  about  two  instances  of 
individual  hardship  cited,  she  said  : 

"In  this  case  the  welfare  of  the  pauper  himself  ought 
to  be  considered.  The  claims  of  common  humanity  are 
to  be  taken  into  consideration  apart  from  the  great  in- 
terest of  the  State.  Massachusetts  has,  in  these  two  cases 
read  for  the  information  of  the  gentlemen,  not  only  piu-- 
sued  a  selfish  policy,  but  has  been  utterly  neghgent  of  the 
welfare  of  the  individual.  If  it  be  true,  as  stated,  she  has 
pushed  these  persons  out  of  the  limits  of  Massachusetts 
with  no  regard  whatever  for  their  welfare.  Both  of  these 
cases  were  of  decent  respectable  people.  If  Massachusetts 
chose  to  support  them  it  would  be  perfectly  proper  to  do 
so,  but  she  had  no  right  to  send  them  to  New  York  un- 
der the  circumstances.  .  .  .'' 

At  another  time  she  said:  '^Is  not  the  injury  done 
to  New  York  measm-ed  by  the  advantage  secured  to 
Massachusetts  ?    From  your  own  reports  it  appears  that 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      303 

in  eight  or  nine  years  past  there  were  about  2,000  paupers 
or  lunatics  removed  from  the  state.  Does  not  that  serve 
to  prove  that  this  is  a  class  of  people  who,  if  they  were 
dependent  in  Massachusetts,  would  be  likely  to  be  depend- 
ent in  New  York  ?  Whether  they  went  to  BlackwelFs 
Island  or  to  the  poorhouse  does  not  matter  for  the  pmposes 
of  this  argument.  We  recognize  that  some  laws  need  to 
be  changed,  and  the  question  is,  which  laws  need  changing 
and  who  is  going  to  change  them.  We  want  to  get  at  the 
right  principle  as  to  what  each  state  ought  to  do,  and  then 
perhaps  we  can  form  some  plan  of  action.  .  .  .'* 

An  abstract  of  the  record  of  the  proceedings,  which  on 
the  request  of  the  New  York  Board  was  prepared  by 
Mr.  Letchworth,  was  printed  in  the  annual  report  for  the 
year  1880,  and  closed  with  the  expression  of  the  hope  that 
a  more  liberal  and  harmonious  policy  would  be  hence- 
forward pursued  by  the  Massachusetts  Board,  a  wish 
which  has  since  been  realized.  A  final  and  important 
reference  to  the  conference  found  in  the  records  of  the 
New  York  Board  appears  in  a  '^Special  Report  of  the 
Standing  Committee  on  the  Insane  in  the  matter  of  the 
Investigation  of  the  New  York  City  Asylum  for  the  In- 
sane," by  Commissioners  Craig,  Milhau  and  Foster, 
dated  August  12,  1887,  written  by  Oscar  Craig,  of  Roches- 
ter, at  that  time  President  of  the  State  Board. 

'^The  effects  of  all  deportations  by  foreign  local  authori- 
ties, charitable  societies,  famiUes  and  individuals  of  alien 
criminals,  lunatics  and  paupers  upon  the  City  of  New 
York,  as  the  port  of  entry,  are  both  direct  and  indirect, 
and  thus  doubly  disastrous.     Those  who   stay  become 


304  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

charges  upon  the  city ;  those  who  go  to  other  states  may 
be  assisted  by  the  authorities  of  such  states  to  return  to 
New  York  Cit}^,  as  was  often  done  in  former  years.  Such 
breaches  of  interstate  comity  by  Massachusetts  resulted 
in  the  conference  between  the  Commissioners  of  Health, 
Lunacy  and  Charity  of  that  State  and  our  State  Board  of 
Charities,  held  in  the  city  of  New  York,  November  12, 
1879. 

"Among  the  points  brought  out  by  this  conference  are 
the  following : 

"  1st.  Massachusetts  had  deported  by  state  authority, 
exclusive  of  those  sent  out  by  its  towns  and  cities,  during 
the  period  from  1870  to  1878,  seven  thousand  and  five 
Paupers  to  the  State,  and  mainly  to  the  City  of  New 
York. 

''2d.  Massachusetts  held  New  York  responsible  for  the 
support  of  persons  who  have  become  dependent  in  that 
State,  but  had  no  settlement  in  New  York,  and  had 
never  been  in  New  York,  except  as  passengers  in  transit 
for  Massachusetts. 

"  It  is  difiicult  to  say  how  far  benefit  has  resulted  from 
that  conference;  but  if  Massachusetts  still  continues 
such  deportations  to  any  great  extent,  they  are  secret 
and  indirect,  through  other  doorways  into  the  State, 
though  the  intended  and  ultimate  destination  of  such  as- 
sisted foreign  paupers  may  be  the  City  of  New  York,  as 
the  original  port  of  entry."  ^ 

The  taxpayers  of  New  York  State  and  the  large  nimiber 
of  paupers  and  vagrants,  who  in  consequence  of  the 
more  liberal  policy  pursued  by  Massachusetts  since  the 

1  Twenty-first  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  for 
the  year  1887,  pp.  252-253. 


WORK  TO  IMPROVE  THE  ALMSHOUSES      305 

conference  of  1879  are  now  sent  through  New  York  State 
to  their  homes  or  places  of  settlement,  have  good  reason 
for  gratitude  to  Mrs.  Lowell  for  the  work  she  did  for 
Massachusetts  paupers. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

The  Women's  Reformatories  at  Albion  and  Bedford 

Two  years  after  its  opening,  the  House  of  Refuge  for 
Women  at  Hudson  sheltered  nearly  two  hundred  inmates, 
and  its  work  was  a  demonstrated  success.  Demands 
for  admission  were  received  in  such  numbers  as  to  indi- 
cate that  unless  outside  relief  was  speedily  provided  the 
institution  would  perforce  grow  to  a  size  not  originally 
contemplated,  a  condition  which  would  prevent  the 
large  measure  of  individual  care  necessary  for  the  genuine 
reformation  of  the  inmates.  Hence  a  demand  sprang 
up  among  the  leaders  in  reformatory  work  for  two  similar 
refuges,  one  to  be  located  in  the  metropolitan  and  the 
other  in  the  western  section  of  the  State,  each  designed 
to  receive  commitments  from  the  neighboring  counties. 
By  this  means  it  was  believed  the  pressure  upon  the  in- 
stitution at  Hudson  would  be  diminished,  and  all  three 
could  be  kept  within  the  limits  of  the  best  reformatory 
size. 

Mrs.  Lowell  and  Mrs.  •  Abby  Hopper  Gibbons,  who 
had  worked  together  in  1886  and  subsequently  for  police 
matrons  in  station  houses,  early  recognized  the  need  of 
such  other  reformatories  for  women,  and  1889  found 
them  each  laboring  for  this  end. 

306 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     307 

In  a  letter  addressed  by  Mrs.  Gibbons  to  Anna,  Powell, 
March  12,  1889,  she  wrote : 

'^I  gathered  my  fragments,  secured  the  necessary  ma- 
terial, sent  to  Hudson  for  a  copy  of  the  report  of  the 
'Refuge  for  Women,'  and  decided  to  have  a  bill  ready 
by  the  day  of  our  meeting,  asking  for  a  Reformatory  for 
Women  of  New  York  and  Kings  County.  I  added  to 
this  some  strong  points  showing  the  need.  We  took  it 
(the  Hudson  report)  for  our  guide.  I  sent  it  to  Hon. 
Hamilton  Fish  to  present." 

The  Legislature  passed  the  bill,  and  this  information 
being  conmiunicated  by  Mrs.  Gibbons  to  Mrs.  Lowell 
brought  forth  prompt  congratulations  in  the  following 
letter : 

New  York,  May  17,  1889. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Gibbons  : 

Thank  you  for  your  good  news  about  the  Reformatory 
Bill.  I  was  very  glad  that  the  trip  to  Albany  did  not 
do  you  any  harm,  and  sorry  not  to  see  you  when  I  was  at 
your  house  this  week. 

I  congratulate  you  on  the  great  work  accomplished  this 
winter,  for  it  will  be  a  great  blessing  to  have  that  reforma- 
tory. 

But  the  end  was  not  to  be  reached  that  year,  for  the 
reason  given  in  a  letter  written  by  Mrs.  Gibbons  to 
Rachel  H.  Powell,  June,  1889:  "Please  convey  to  thy 
beloved  parents  the  non-approval  of  our  Women's  Re- 
formatory Bill.  ...  I  hoped  the  bill  would  pass,  but 
why  I  should  hope  for  any  good  thing  from  David  B.  Hill, 


308  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

or  expect  it,  I  do  not  know."     Like  the  first  Hudson 
Reformatory  bill,  it  was  killed  by  executive  veto. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Lowell,  as  Commissioner  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  was  helping  on  the  movement  for  the 
new  institutions.  She  was  acting  Chairman  of  the  Board's 
Standing  Committee  on  Reformatories,  and  presented 
to  the  Board  in  1889  a  report  in  which  she  called  attention 
to  the  fact  that  the  House  of  Refuge  at  Hudson  was  already 
full: 

''It  is  most  desirable  that  a  second  reformatory  for 
women  should  be  established  in  the  western  part  of  the 
State  to  receive  young  women  guilty  of  misdemeanors, 
from  the  fifth,  sixth,  seventh  and  eighth  judicial  districts. 
.  .  .  Such  an  institution  should  be  established  at 
once;  it  would  relieve  the  State  Industrial  School  at 
Rochester  of  the  older  girls  now  committed  there,  and 
who  ought  to  be  removed,  besides  receiving  those  now 
sent  to  the  House  of  Refuge  at  Hudson  from  the  western 
part  of  the  State.  For  New  York  City  and  Kings  County 
such  a  reformatory  is  also  needed.  These  localities  cannot, 
under  the  law,  commit  to  the  House  of  Refuge  for  Women 
at  Hudson;  and  though  there  is  room  in  the  House  of 
Refuge  on  Randall's  Island  for  girls  under  sixteen  years, 
for  those  older  there  is  no  public  institution  but  the  work- 
house in  New  York,  and  the  jail  and  penitentiary  in  King's 
County. 

"  The  committee  requests  the  Board  to  recommend  to  the 
Legislature  the  establishment  of  both  these  new  reforma- 
tories." ^ 

Mrs.  Lowell's  accessible  papers  covering  this  period 
contain  nothing  farther  relating  to  the  Bedford  Reforma- 

» Report  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  for  1889,  p.  124. 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     309 

tory,  and  Mrs.  Gibbons  appears  to  have  been  henceforward 
the  leader  in  the  movement  which  resulted  in  the  establish- 
ment of  that  institution.  ' 
Success,  however,  sooner  attended  the  effort  to  secure 
a  women's  reformatory  for  the  western  part  of  the  State. 
On  this  subject  Hon.  William  Pry  or  Letch  worth  has  sup- 
plied the  following  letter,  addressed  to  him  as  President  of 
the  State  Board  of  Charities  by  Mrs.  Lowell : 

120  East  30th  Street,  January  24,  1890. 
My  dear  Mr.  Letchworth  : 

As  you  know,  the  Board  recommended  in  its  report  this 
year  the  establishment  of  a  new  reformatory  for  women, 
on  the  Hudson  plan  for  the  western  part  of  the  State,  . .  . 
and  the  bill  for  that  purpose  is  to  be  introduced  this 
week. 

The  proposed  institution  is  to  be  exclusively  for  women 
committed  from  the  6th,  7th,  and  8th  Judicial  Districts, 
and  I  write  to  ask  most  earnestly  that  you  will  present  the 
matter  very  strongly  to  your  Senators  and  Assemblymen. 

The  Board  has  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  success  of  the 
experiment  at  Hudson,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  if  that 
institution  is  enlarged,  or  overcrowded  without  being 
enlarged,  as  it  will  inevitably  be,  unless  another  one  of 
the  same  kind  is  provided  for  the  western  part  of  the 
State,  its  usefulness  will  be  almost  destroyed.  .  .  . 

The  bill  referred  to  in  the  foregoing  letter  became  law 
without  the  approval  of  Governor  Hill,  April  30,  1890.^ 
It  established  as  a  new  State  institution  the  Western 
House  of  Refuge  for  Women,  soon  afterwards  located  at 

1  Chapter  238,  Laws  of  1890. 


310  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

Albion  in  Wayne  County,  near  Rochester.  This  reforma- 
tory, mainly  conducted  on  the  cottage  plan,  has  rendered 
valuable  service,  and  at  the  close  of  1909  sheltered  270 
inmates. 

Mrs.  Gibbons,  disappointed  but  not  discouraged  by  the 
veto  of  the  bill  for  a  reformatory  for  young  women  of  the 
metropolitan  district,  renewed  her  efforts  for  this  institu- 
tion, and  for  nearly  three  years  indefatigably  continued 
them.  '^In  February,  1892,  when  she  was  past  ninety 
years  of  age,  she  went  once  more  to  Albany  with  two  other 
members  of  the  Women's  Prison  Association,  and  appeared 
at  a  hearing  before  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee,  to 
advocate  the  measure.  This  had  the  effect  to  carry  the 
bill  in  the  Assembly  without  a  dissenting  vote.''  ^  After 
passing  the  Senate,  it  was  approved  by  Governor  Flower 
May  16,  1892.  Mrs.  Gibbons  received  valuable  aid  in 
her  campaign  from  Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler,  Joseph  H. 
Choate,  James  C.  Carter,  and  John  H.  Finley.  She  lived 
to  see  the  purchase  of  the  site  at  Bedford,  where  one 
of  the  principal  buildings  has  since  been  named  in  her 
honor,  and  died  in  1893. 

Work  upon  the  buildings  proceeded  slowly  for  want  of 
appropriations  and  other  causes.  The  act  which  estab- 
lished the  reformatory  provided  that  the  construction 
work  should  be  upon  plans  and  specifications  approved  by 
a  special  commission  composed  of  the  Superintendent  of 
State  Prisons,  the  Commissioners  of  the  new  Capitol,  and 
the  Comptroller.    This  commission  seldom  met,  and  its 

1  "Life  of  Abby  Hopper  Gibbons,'!  by  Sarah  M.  Emerson,  Vol.  I, 
p.  253. 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     311 

approval  of  plans  and  specifications  was  thus  delayed,  and 
building  operations  prevented  for  a  considerable  period. 
Mrs.  Lowell  no  doubt  did  what  she  could  to  expedite  it ; 
the  following  letter  addressed  to  Mr.  Robert  W.  Heb- 
berd,  at  that  time  Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties, of  which  she  was  no  longer  a  member,  is  an  evidence 
of  her  interest : 

120  East  30th  Street,  December  21,  1898. 
My  dear  Mr.  Hebberd  : 

I  hope  the  Board  is  going  to  help  this  year  in  securing 
the  appropriation  needed  to  open  and  operate  the  Bedford 
Reformatory.  We  need  the  institution,  and  not  for  young 
girls  and  children,  but  for  the  older  and  more  hardened 
offenders.  The  House  of  Refuge  and  the  private  rescue 
homes  should  take  care  of  the  younger  and  more  in- 
pressionable,  and  let  us  keep  the  reformatories  for  the 
less  manageable.  I  hope  the  Board  will  not  cause  delay 
by  insisting  on  the  buildings  being  altered,  for  we  ought 
to  have  the  institution  for  use. 

I  wrote  to  Gov.  Roosevelt,  and  think  he  will  appreciate 
the  seriousness  of  the  matters  referred  to.  .  .  . 

I  sent  Mr.  Stewart  what  you  wrote  to  me  about  him, 
as  I  thought  he  deserved  the  gratification,  and  enclose  you 
his  reply  for  the  same  reason.^  .  .  . 

Nine  years  elapsed  from  the  establishment  of  the  re- 
formatory at  Bedford  until  its  opening,  for  the  first  inmate 
was  not  received  until  May  11,  1901.   ^None  of  the  New 

*  My  first  intention  to  omit  this  personal  allusion  has  been  changed 
because  of  a  desire  to  show  Mrs.  Lowell's  characteristic  thoughtfulness 
for  the  gratification  of  others. 


312  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

York  State  institutions  of  a  charitable  or  reformatory 
character  has  had  so  tardy  a  beginning,  but  with  the 
opening  began  an  uninterrupted  career  of  useful  and  in- 
telligent development.  Mrs.  Lowell  became  a  member  of 
the  board  of  managers  in  1899,  upon  appointment  by  Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt,  and  was  most  influential  in  planning  for 
the  success  of  the  work  now  carried  on  there. 

Immediate  and  cordial  support  by  the  State  was  not 
accorded  the  new  institution,  and  the  work  was  at  first 
prosecuted  amid  many  discouragements.  Shortly  after  it 
was  opened,  and  when  it  contained  few  inmates,  the  re- 
formatory was  visited  by  Governor  Odell,  who,  from  his 
subsequent  attitude,  evidently  then  reached  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  not  needed.  On  the  recommendation  of  this 
Governor,  the  office  of  Fiscal  Supervisor  of  State  Charities 
was  created  by  the  Legislature  in  1902,  to  assume  the  func- 
tions of  supervision  exercised  at  that  time  over  the  financial 
affairs  of  the  State  charitable  and  reformatory  institutions 
by  the  State  Comptroller.  The  Governor  appointed  as  the 
first  Fiscal  Supervisor  Mr.  Harry  H.  Bender  of  Albany, 
then  Superintendent  of  Pubhc  Buildings.  This  official 
soon  took  the  position  that  the  reformatory  at  Bedford 
was  superfluous,  and  did  not  favor  requests  made  from  time 
to  time  for  the  employment  of  additional  officers  thought 
by  the  managers  to  be  needed  at  the  institution.  A  cor- 
respondence ensued  between  him  and  Mrs.  Lowell  on  this 
subject,  as  appears  from  the  following  letter  addressed  to 
Mr.  Robert  W.  Hebberd : 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     313 

120  East  30th  Street,  November  11,  ^02. 

My  dear  Mr.  Hebberd  : 

I  have  had  a  correspondence  with  Mr.  Bender,  in  which, 
in  reply  to  my  statement  that  so  far  as  I  could  judge  the 
only  point  of  similarity  between  our  reformatory  and  the 
Rathbone  Home  was  that  the  inmates  were  of  the  same 
sex,  he  says  he  still  thinks  they  are  quite  similar  and 
wants  to  know  if  we  cannot  decrease  the  number  of  our 
officers. 

Wishing  to  be  free  so  that  she  might  more  effectively  pro- 
test and  work  against  the  proposed  closing  of  the  re- 
formatory at  Bedford,  Mrs.  Lowell  resigned  from  the 
board  of  managers,  giving  her  reasons  in  the  following 
letter,  also  addressed  to  Mr.  Hebberd : 

120  East  30th  Street,  November  22,  '02. 
My  dear  Mr.  Hebberd  : 

...  I  have  resigned  from  the  Bedford  Board,  telling  the 
Governor  I  did  not  wish  to  involve  the  other  managers 
in  responsibility  for  my  action  in  condemning  his  course. 

Mr.  James  Wood  of  Mount  Kisco,  near  Bedford,  was 
then  as  now  ^  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Managers  of  the 
institution,  and  under  his  earnest  and  intelligent  leadership 
organized  opposition  was  arranged  to  defeat  the  bill  to 
close  the  reformatory  which  was  introduced  in  the  Legisla- 
ture of  1903.  Mr.  Wood's  account  of  what  took  place  at 
the  hearing  in  Albany  is  so  interesting  historically  and  so 
illustrative  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  methods  and  influence  on 
such  occasions  as  to  merit  insertion  verbatim : 

1  February,  1910. 


314  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

'^Governor  Odell  visited  the  institution  at  Bedford  but 
once  during  his  governorship  when  we  had  but  eighteen  in- 
mates, and  he  never  seemed  to  reaUze  that  that  number  had 
been  increased  but  kept  it  in  mind  continually  and  thought 
that  the  State  was  incurring  heavy  expense  in  caring  for  a 
small  number  of  inmates.  State  hospitals  for  the  insane 
were  sorely  pressed  for  room  at  that  time  to  receive  those 
requiring  their  care ;  the  lease  of  the  Flatbush  Hospital  by 
the  City  of  Brooklyn  to  the  State  was  about  to  expire,  and 
it  became  necessary  to  provide  acconmiodations  for  the  in- 
mates of  that  hospital.  Governor  Odell,  considering  that 
the  work  at  Bedford  was  not  making  adequate  return  to 
the  State  for  the  amount  expended  there,  proposed  to  close 
the  institution  as  a  reformatory  and  convert  it  into  a  hos- 
pital for  the  insane,  it  being  all  ready  to  receive  the  in- 
mates of  the  Flatbush  Hospital.  For  this  purpose  he  had 
a  bill  introduced  into  the  Legislature  which  was  referred 
in  the  Senate  to  the  Finance  Committee,  and  in  the  Assem- 
bly to  the  Committee  on  Ways  and  Means.  As  it  involved 
a  change  of  law,  it  was  also  referred  to  the  Judiciary  Com- 
mittee of  the  Senate.  For  the  first  time  in  many  years,  a 
joint  session  was  held  for  these  committees  to  hear  the 
advocates  and  opponents  of  the  bill. 

^^  Wishing*  to  present  the  needs  for  the  reformatory 
properly,  the  management  put  themselves  in  touch  with 
the  State  Board  of  Charities,  the  W^omen's  Prison  As- 
sociation of  New  York,  the  Supervisor  of  Catholic  Chari- 
ties, the  United  Hebrew  Charities,  the  Hebrew  Women's 
Association,  and  other  organizations.  It  was  a  matter  of 
great  satisfaction  to  the  management  that  every  one  of 
the  institutions  and  organizations  thus  approached  sent 
a  representative  to  Albany  for  the  hearing,  except  the 
United  Hebrew  Charities,  whose  President  sent  a  very 
strong  letter  to  the  Conamittees. 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     315 

"At  the  hearing  the  Governor's  representative  in 
advocacy  of  the  bill  was  the  Fiscal  Supervisor,  Mr.  Bender. 
The  attendance  of  the  members  of  the  Committees  at  the 
hearing  was  unusually  large,  and  it  was  presided  over 
by  the  Chairman  of  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Senate, 
George  R.  Malby.  Dm-ing  this  hearing,  the  Governor's 
representative  attacked  the  reformatory  in  every  way 
possible,  using  a  great  variety  of  detailed  information 
obtained  through  the  inspectors  of  the  Fiscal  Supervisor's 
Department.  Among  other  things,  it  was  charged  that 
the  treatment  of  the  inmates  was  inhumane,  a  special  point 
being  made  of  the  fact  that  on  one  occasion  the  fire  hose 
was  turned  upon  one  of  the  inmates.  Mrs.  Lowell  sat 
in  the  audience  and  immediately  arose  and  addressed  the 
Chairman  of  the  hearing  and  stated  that  this  charge  should 
not  be  laid  against  the  management  of  the  institution 
as  a  whole  but  only  against  herself  individually,  as  she 
was  present  on  the  occasion  and  herself  directed  the  super- 
intendent to  use  the  hose  as  stated.  The  facts  were,  she 
said,  that  the  inmate  was  a  desperate  character  who  had 
acknowledged  the  commission  of  three  murders  in  the  City 
of  New  York,  and  had  escaped  punishment  therefor  on 
the  claim  of  self-defence.  She  had  been  guilty  of  a  number 
of  violent  acts  while  at  the  reformatory,  and  in  this  case 
had  taken  refuge  in  a  room  and  had  armed  herself  with 
such  appliances  as  she  could  lay  her  hands  on  and  was 
making  desperate  resistance  to  the  officers.  As  a  pro- 
tection to  the  inmate  from  what  appeared  to  be  neces- 
sarily severe  treatment,  which  might  do  her  personal 
injury,  and  also  for  the  protection  of  the  officers,  Mrs. 
Lowell  deemed  it  best  that  the  hose  should  be  used. 

''This  statement  by  Mrs.  Lowell  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  the  members  of  the  Legislative  Committees,  and 
her  magnificent  bearing  and  courageous  admission  of  all 


316  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

responsibility  had  the  effect  to  disconcert  the  Governor's 
representative  and  doubtless  had  much  to  do  with  the 
result  of  the  hearing.  The  result  of  the  hearing  was  that 
no  member  of  the  Committees  named  voted  to  report  the 
bill.  It  was  turned  down  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  all 
the  Committees.  The  representatives  of  all  the  institu- 
tions named  were  very  emphatic  in  their  testimony  as  to 
the  need  of  the  institution  and  the  value  of  its  work." 

When,  as  has  been  mentioned,  appropriations  for  the 
salaries  of  needed  officers  were  withheld  by  the  State,  be- 
cause of  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  work  of  the  reforma- 
tory, Mrs.  Lowell  made  provision  from  time  to  time  from 
her  own  modest  income  for  the  most  pressing  needs.  In 
1902,  she  paid  the  salary  of  a  young  woman  experienced 
in  college  settlement  work,  who  devoted  much  of  her  time 
to  the  girls  isolated  for  bad  conduct,  and  also  the  salary  of 
an  instructor  in  amusements.  The  following  year  the 
managers  called  attention  in  their  report  to  the  need  of 
a  teacher  of  calisthenics  and  gymnastics,  and  again  Mrs. 
Lowell  supplied  the  needed  instructor,  the  State  at  that 
time  being  unwilling  to  provide  for  the  salary.  Practically 
all  the  inmates  were  taught  in  the  gymnastic  classes,  and 
the  results  were  soon  found  so  valuable,  both  for  health 
and  discipline,  that  this  branch  of  reformatory  work  was 
adopted  by  the  State,  not  only  at  Bedford,  but  also  at 
the  other  reformatories  at  Hudson  and  Albion.  A  special 
matron  was  employed,  also  at  Mrs.  LowelFs  expense,  to 
take  charge  of  the  gardening  and  other  outdoor  work, 
under  the  direction  of  this  officer  much  of  the  planting 
and  weeding  and  gathering  of  crops  being  done  by  the 
girls. 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION  AND  BEDFORD     317 

In  their  report  to  the  Legislature  covering  the  year  1902, 
the  managers  of  the  reformatory  paid  the  following  tribute 
to  Mrs.  Loweirs  services  as  a  member  of  the  Board : 

*'One  change  in  the  membership  of  the  Board  of  Mana- 
gers has  occurred  during  the  past  year.  Mrs.  Charles 
Russell  Lowell,  who  had  been  a  manager  for  nearly  three 
years,  resigned  in  November,  1902.  Mrs.  Lowell  has  been 
widely  known  for  many  years  for  her  devotion  to  the  work 
of  social  reform  in  various  aspects,  and  she  was  pre- 
eminently suited  for  the  office  of  a  manager.  Her  interest 
in  the  success  of  this  institution  did  not  end  with  the 
faithful  and  efficient  discharge  of  her  official  duties,  but 
she  constantly  supplemented  the  work  carried  on  by  the 
State  by  providing  at  her  own  private  expense  for  the 
salaries  of  special  teachers  which  the  State  authorities 
had  not  seen  fit  to  allow,  and  continues  to  do  this  up  to 
the  present  time.  She  has  also  contributed  in  various 
ways  to  the  encouragement  and  benefit  of  the  inmates, 
as  will  be  more  fully  shown  by  the  report  of  the  superin- 
tendent. The  managers  regarded  her  separation  from 
the  board  as  a  most  serious  loss  to  the  institution." 

In  reply  to  a  request  to  the  superintendent  of  the  in- 
stitution for  some  details  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  work  as  a 
manager,  a  letter  was  received  from  which  the  following 
extracts  are  given : 

Bedford,  N.Y.,  November  1,  1905. 
My  dear  Mr.  Stewart: 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  express  how  keenly  we  feel  Mrs. 
Lowell's  loss.  As  you  knew,  at  the  time  of  the  opening 
of  the  institution  she  was  a  member  of  our  Board  of  Mana- 
gers.    When  the  time  approached,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  one 


318  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  the  Board  who  was  most  anxious  concerning  the  secur- 
ing of  a  Superintendent  and  staff.  She  desired  that  the 
educational  and  reformatory  side  be  made  especially  strong 
and  was  anxious  to  secure  a  Superintendent  who  was  in 
touch  with  modern  educational  methods,  who  was  not  in 
institution  ruts,  and  who  had  received  academic  training. 
This  led  her  to  correspond  with  presidents  of  women's 
and  coeducational  colleges  and  universities  and  with  the 
Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae. 

Mrs.  Lowell's  personal  visits  to  the  institution  from  the 
time  of  its  opening  were  frequent.  She  not  only  advised 
with  the  Superintendent,  but  made  the  acquaintance  of 
the  inmates,  especially  those  who  were  more  refractory. 
She  was  in  the  habit  of  spending  the  night  at  the  in- 
stitution, occupying  a  room  in  one  of  the  cottages  or  in 
the  Reception  House,  in  order  that  she  might  become 
personally  familiar  with  the  methods  of  discipline  at  night. 
She  gained  the  confidence  and  affection  of  individual 
inmates  and  from  time  to  time  corresponded  with  a  num- 
ber of  these.  She  also  interested  herself  in  their  families. 
In  one  instance,  she  bore  the  expense  of  the  journey  of  a 
young  French  woman  whom  we  desired  to  return  to  her 
mother  in  France,  an  expense  which  the  authorities  did 
not  deem  necessary.  The  last  letter  received  from  her 
after  the  beginning  of  her  final  illness  was  one  concerning 
the  employment  of  the  girls  in  the  lowest  grade.  This  was 
accompanied  by  a  letter  to  one  of  the  inmates  whom  she 
had  befriended  and  who  sent  Mrs.  Lowell  a  basket  which 
she  had  made.  Although  Mrs.  Lowell  was  seriously  ill  at 
the  time,  she  personally  wrote  a  note  of  thanks  to  the  girl 
saying  how  much  she  appreciated  being  thus  remembered. 

One  of  our  cottages,  the  Lowell,  was  named  in  her 
honor.  In  this  she  was  particularly  interested.  She  was 
always  anxious  to  have  things  done  inamediately.     On 


REFORMATORIES  AT  ALBION   AND  BEDFORD     319 

one  visit  she  was  especially  pleased  with  the  painting  and 
decoration  of  the  sitting  and  dining  rooms  of  this  cottage 
which  had  been  done  by  the  inmates.  She  wanted  the 
corridors  painted  at  once  to  make  the  work  complete; 
when  told  that  we  must  wait  a  month  to  estimate  for  the 
necessary  materials,  she  immediately  gave  the  money  to 
buy  them,  begging  that  the  work  be  not  interrupted.  On 
Mrs.  Lowell's  retirement  from  the  Board  of  Managers, 
not  only  the  managers  and  officers  of  the  institution,  but 
the  girls  as  well,  felt  her  loss  keenly.  Her  interest  did  not 
cease  with  her  retirement  from  the  Board.  As  before 
mentioned,  she  kept  in  touch  with  us  until  her  death 
and  her  gifts  in  money  continued  to  be  a  very  great  help. 
In  every  instance  when  the  thing  for  which  she  paid  had 
proved  itself,  we  were  able  to  make  it  permanent  by  con- 
vincing the  authorities  that  it  had  been  of  value. 

On  the  Sunday  following  her  death,  memorial  services 
were  held  for  her  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Reformatory.  .  .  . 
Very  sincerely  yours, 

KA.THARINE    BeMENT   DaVIS. 


CHAPTER  XV 
Work  for  Police  Matrons 

The  indignities  to  which  it  was  alleged  women  were 
subjected  in  the  police  stations  and  prisons  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  in  which  at  that  time  no  matrons  were  em- 
ployed, of  such  a  nature  that  they  cannot  well  be  men- 
tioned here,  induced  Mrs.  Lowell,  in  the  spring  of  1886,  to 
request  Dr.  Annie  S.  Daniel  to  make  an  investigation  and 
to  report  to  her  the  findings.  Dr.  Daniel,  who  was  then 
attending  physician  to  the  Isaac  T.  Hopper  Home  of  the 
Women^s  Prison  Association,  was  an  associate  of  Mrs.  Lowell 
in  the  Working  Women^s  Society,  and  had  made  some  in- 
vestigations for  the  Tenement  House  Commission,  of  which 
Dr.  Felix  Adler  was  chairman.  Mrs.  LowelFs  familiarity 
with  Dr.  DanieFs  reports  of  these  investigations,  and  her 
knowledge  of  the  great  interest  which  she  manifested  in 
the  condition  of  women  prisoners,  led  to  the  request  for 
her  assistance  in  this  new  undertaking.  Necessary  per- 
mission for  this  investigation  was  obtained  by  Mrs.  Lowell 
for  three  persons,  and  it  was  her  intention  to  join  in  the  in- 
spections, but  the  pressure  of  other  official  work  prevented. 

Dr.  Daniel  informs  me  that  Mrs.  Weidemeyer,  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society,  visited  the  Essex  Market 
prison  with  her,  and  that  to  all  the  other  station  houses 
and  prisons  she  went  alone.  The  written  report,  made 
by  Dr.  Daniel  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  substantiated  the  allega- 
tions of  abuses,  and  resulted  in  a  conference  of  public- 

320 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  321 

spirited  women,  which  assembled  on  Mrs.  LowelFs  in- 
vitation in  the  autumn  of  1886,  for  the  consideration  of  the 
need  of  poHce  matrons  in  station  houses,  and  of  other 
social  questions  of  municipal  interest.  At  a  session  of  this 
conference,  held  in  November  and  December  of  that  year, 
Mrs.  Abby  Hopper  Gibbons,  President  of  the  Women's 
Prison  Association  of  the  City  of  New  York,  asked  for 
the  report  for  publication  in  the  proceedings  of  the  As- 
sociation, there  to  be  made  the  basis  of  pubhc  agitation 
on  its  part  for  police  matrons  in  station  houses.  To  this 
Dr.  Daniel  and  Mrs.  Lowell  consented,  and  the  move- 
ment for  this  important  reform  was  thus  begun.  Dr. 
Daniel  became  the  instrument  in  Mrs.  Lowell's  hands  for 
this  beneficent  purpose.  She  has  informed  me  that  her 
report  was  received  too  late  for  publication  in  1886. 
In  slightly  modified  form,  with  the  statistics  brought  down 
to  the  year  1887,  it  found  place  in  the  proceedings  of  the 
Women's  Prison  Association  for  that  year. 

Free  lodgings  in  the  station  houses  were  then  given 
indiscriminately  to  homeless  or  vagrant  men  and  women, 
a  practice  which,  Mrs.  Lowell  beheved,  increased  the  evils 
and  abuses  found  in  them.  The  charitable  and  cor- 
rectional institutions  of  the  city  were  then  administered 
by  one  Commission,  and  any  one  applying  for  a  night's 
lodging  was  given  shelter  wherever  it  was  sought,  so  that 
the  same  building  served  for  correction  and  charity,  and 
the  station  houses,  being  numerous  and  accessible,  were 
resorted  to,  especially  in  bad  weather,  by  the  idle,  the 
vicious,  and  the  unfortunate  in  large  numbers,  beside  hous- 
ing those  arrested  for  crime. 


322  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Following  the  conference  of  women,  which  was  continued 
in  1887,  Mrs.  Lowell  actively  engaged,  with  other  benevo- 
lent and  public-spirited  women,  in  securing  three  reforms, 
which  aimed  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  the  disgraceful 
conditions  then  found  to  exist  in  the  station  houses : 

L  The  division  of  the  Department  of  Charities  and 
Correction  into  two  departments. 

2.  The  appointment  of  police  matrons  for  all  station 
houses  and  prisons. 

3.  The  establishment  of  a  municipal  lodging  house, 
or  houses,  for  homeless  men  and  women. 

Practical  and  useful  reforms,  all  three,  and  all  of  them 
long  since  accomplished ;  but  the  need  of  police  matrons 
seemed  the  most  pressing,  and  received  Mrs.  Lowell's  first 
attention. 

The  Women's  Prison  Association,  formed  in  1844,  was 
simultaneously  at  work  under  the  able  leadership  of  Mrs. 
Gibbons,^  to  secure  reformed  administration  of  the  city 
station  houses  and  prisons,  and  it  was  largely  due  to  this 
Association  that  Chapter  420  of  the  Laws  of  1888,  enti- 
tled '^An  Act  to  provide  for  Police  Matrons  in  Cities'' 
was  placed  among  the  statutes  of  New  York  State,  May 
28  of  that  year.2    Under  the  provisions  of  this  law,  the 

i"Life  of  Mrs.  Gibbons,"  Vol.  I,  p.  251. 

2  Ibid.     Vol.  II,  p.  262,  Letter  from  Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell : 

Cambridge,  June  5th,  1888. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Gibbons  : 

Thank  you  very  much  for  your  kind  thought  of  me.  The  passage 
of  that  law  is  a  great  step  gained  in  the  struggle  to  save  degraded 
women ;  and  I  am  sure  everyone  interested  ought  to  be  very  grateful 
to  you  and  Dr.  Daniel. 

Sincerely  and  gratefully  yours, 

J.  S.  Lowell. 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  323 

Board  of  Commissioners  of  Police  of  the  cities  of  New 
York  and  Brooklyn  was  directed  within  three  months 
after  the  passage  of  the  act,  to  designate  one  or  more 
station  houses  within  their  respective  cities  for  the  de- 
tention and  confinement  of  all  women  under  arrest,  upon 
the  appropriation  of  funds  therefor;  the  Commissioners 
were  further  directed  to  appoint  for  each  station  house 
thus  designated  not  more  than  two  respectable  women,  to 
be  known  as  police  matrons.  When  only  one  police 
matron  was  attached  to  a  station  house,  she  must  reside 
there,  or  near  by,  and  respond  to  any  call  therefrom  at 
any  hour.  The  law  further  provided  that  the  police 
matron,  subject  to  the  officer  in  charge,  should  have  the 
immediate  care  and  charge  of  all  women  held  under  arrest 
at  the  station  house  to  which  she  was  attached ;  also,  that 
women  and  men  should  be  kept  separate  and  apart  in  the 
station  houses. 

Although  the  city  prisons  then  had  matrons,  they  were 
sometimes  incompetent,  or  their  services  did  not  cover  all 
the  hours  of  the  day.  On  this  subject.  Dr.  Daniel  men- 
tions the  following  instance  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  method  of 
work:  ''Mrs.  Lowell's  abiUty  to  act  promptly  was  de- 
monstrated when  conditions,  proved  to  exist  in  one  of  the 
city  prisons,  were  told  her.  At  the  particular  prison, 
a  matron  was  in  attendance  from  8  a.m.  to  5  p.m.  ;  the 
remainder  of  the  twenty-four  hours  this  woman's  prisoners 
were  entirely  in  the  care  of  men  keepers.  Facts  were  dis- 
closed, which  could  neither  be  talked  of  openly  nor  pub- 
lished. Mrs.  Lowell,  hearing  this  shocking  story,  went  at 
once   to   the   Commissioners'   office  and  was   told   that 


324  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

nothing  could  be  done,  owing  to  the  lack  of  appropriations. 
TVithin  half  an  hour,  she  convinced  the  Commissioners 
that  women  prisoners  must  be  protected,  and  a  way  was 
opened  by  them  to  appoint  an  additional  matron.  From 
that  day  to  this,  prisoners  in  that  prison  have  had  the 
protection  of  a  woman.  ^^ 

Notwithstanding  the  mandatory  provisions  of  the  act 
of  1888,  by  which  the  Commissioners  of  Police  of  New 
York  and  Brooklyn  were  directed  to  appoint  pohce  matrons 
within  three  months  from  the  passage  of  the  act,  those 
officials  disobeyed  the  law  for  more  than  two  years,  until 
a  public  scandal  in  a  station  house  called  forth  the  follow- 
ing letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell,  at  that  time  a  Commissioner 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities: 

No.  120  East  30th  Street,  August  5,  1890. 

To  THE  Board  of  Police  op  the  City  of  New  York  : 
Gentlemen  : 

When  I  and  many  other  women  made  an  appeal  to 
you  some  months  since  to  appoint  police  matrons  to  have 
charge  of  women  detained  in  the  station  houses,  we  based 
our  argument  on  the  ground  that  common  decency  de- 
manded that  drunken  and  degraded  women  should  be 
removed  from  the  sight  and  hearing  of  the  men  and  boys 
who  for  various  causes  are  held  in  the  station  houses. 

We  said  that  we  deemed  it  a  great  wrong  that  such 
women  should  be  allowed  to  contaminate  by  their  evil 
conduct  and  language,  men  and  boys,  arrested  perhaps 
for  some  trivial  offence,  or  perhaps  entirely  innocent. 

We  did  not  say  that  we  thought  the  women  in  the  station 
houses  unsafe  while  under  the  care  of  officers  appointed 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  325 

by  you,  for  although  we  had  heard  such  accusations, 
personally,  I  could  not,  I  confess,  believe  them. 

Within  two  months,  however,  one  of  your  officers  has 
pleaded  guilty  and  been  sentenced  to  imprisonment  for 
attempted  assault  on  a  girl  of  fifteen,  while  under  the 
protection  of  your  Board  in  one  of  your  station  houses. 

As  your  Board  has  had  the  power  for  the  past  two  years 
to  keep  all  women  in  the  station  houses  safe  from  such 
wrongs,  by  placing  them  under  the  charge  of  matrons, 
it  does  not  seem  unjust  to  say  that  you  are  responsible 
for  the  fearful  experience  of  this  young  girl,  and  also  for 
the  ruin  of  the  fife  of  the  man  whom  you  placed  in  a  posi- 
tion, the  temptation  of  which  he  could  not  resist.  Of 
him  or  his  past  I  know  nothing,  but  I  see  it  stated  that  his 
fellow-officers  testified  to  his  good  character,  by  which 
they  presumably  meant  that  he  was  a  man  whom  they 
should  not  have  supposed  capable  of  so  vile  and  unmanly 
a  crime,  and  therefore  it  appears  that  it  was  actually  the 
circumstances  which  have  changed  him  from  a  respected 
officer  to  a  convicted  felon. 

In  the  name  of  the  women  who,  in  the  station  houses, 
are  still  exposed  to  this  horrible  danger,  in  the  name  of 
your  officers  to  whom  temptation  is  presented  by  the  exist- 
ing system,  I  write  to  beg  you  to  use  at  once  your  power 
to  designate  certain  station  houses  where  all  women  shall 
be  detained  and  placed  under  the  charge  of  matrons. 
Respectfully, 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

This  letter  was  published  in  full,  in  one  or  more  of  the 
daily  papers  of  New  York  City,  with  the  statement  that 
it  had  been  received  by  the  Board  of  PoUce.  But  the 
Board  continued  to  neglect  its  duties  in  this  particular. 


326  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  the  pressure  upon  it  was  continued  by  Mrs.  Lowell 
and  her  earnest  associates,  in  a  memorial  addressed  to  the 
Grand  Jury  of  the  City  of  New  York,  a  draft  of  which, 
found  among  her  papers,  is  evidently  in  Mrs.  Lowell's 
language. 

Beginning  with  the  charge  that  the  Board  of  Police 
Commissioners  of  New  York  City  had  persistently^  neg- 
lected to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the  act  to  provide  for 
police  matrons  in  cities,  the  memorial  recites  the  provi- 
sion of  that  law  requiring  the  Board  to  designate  one  or 
more  station  houses  for  the  detention  or  confinement  of 
all  women  under  arrest,  and  the  passage  on  September  7, 
1888,  by  the  Board,  of  a  resolution  designating  all  the 
station  houses  for  the  purpose  mentioned,  for  lack  of  funds 
to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the  law,  and  then  charges, 
that  the  adoption  of  this  resolution  was  merely  an  evasion 
of  law,  as  shown  (1)  "By  the  fact  that  no  funds  were  re- 
quired to  enable  the  Board  of  Police  Commissioners  to  des- 
ignate certain  station  houses  for  the  detention  of  women, 
which  in  itself  would  have  been  a  great  reform,"  and  (2) 
"By  the  fact  that  since  the  adoption  of  that  resolution, 
the  Commissioners  of  Police  have  submitted  to  the  Board 
of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  the  estimates  for  the  ex- 
penses of  their  Department  for  the  years  1889,  1890,  and 
1891,  and  have  never  included,  although  repeatedly  re- 
quested to  do  so,  any  estimate  for  funds  to  enable  them 
to  carry  out  such  provision  of  the  law  as  did  require  an 
appropriation,  that  is,  those  relating  to  the  appointment 
of  police  matrons." 

Continuing,  the  memorialists  offer  to  prove  also,  (1)  the 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  327 

impossibility  of  observing  common  decenc}^  in  the  sta- 
tion houses  of  the  city,  in  at  least  fourteen  of  which 
the  cells  were  so  constructed,  that  women  imprisoned 
in  them  could  not  be  kept  out  of  hearing  of  men  and  boys 
also  confined  there,  while  in  four,  the  cells  were  so  placed 
that  any  women  imprisoned  would  probably  also  be  in 
sight  of  other  prisoners;  (2)  that  at  present  women 
prisoners  were  searched  either  by  irresponsible  women 
or  police  officers;  (3)  that  being  under  the  care  of  men, 
women  were  exposed  to  danger  from  which  the  city  should 
protect  them;  to  sustain  this  charge,  the  conviction 
of  a  police  officer  of  the  22d  Precinct  referred  to  in  Mrs. 
Lowell's  letter  to  the  Board  of  Police  was  cited ;  (4)  that 
the  police  ofiicers  themselves  were  unnecessarily  exposed 
to  temptation  as  proved  in  the  same  case. 

The  memorial  quotes  the  police  statistics  for  1889  in 
further  support  of  its  contentions : 

'^In  that  year,  147,634  lodgings  in  station  houses  were 
furnished  to  indigent  persons,  69,111  to  women,  78,523  to 
men ;  an  average  of  189  women  and  215  men  each  night. 
The  women  were  under  the  sole  charge  of  men.  .  .  . 
During  the  same  year,  there  were  82,200  arrests,  of  which 
19,926  were  of  women,  an  average  of  54  each  day,  and 
62,274  were  of  men,  an  average  of  170  a  day ;  of  the  82,200, 
9,514  were  of  boys  under  twenty  years  and  991  of  girls 
under  twenty  years. 

'^  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  to  put  these  ten  thousand 
boys  and  girls,  many  of  whom  are  innocent,  into  com- 
panionship in  the  station  houses  for  hours  at  a  time  with 
the  most  degraded  men  and  women  of  the  city,  within 
hearing,  often  within  sight  of  much  that  is  wicked  and 


328  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

debasing,  is  a  crime  against  humanity,  and  must  be  pro- 
ductive of  great  moral  injury  to  them.  The  confinement  of 
the  women  in  special  station  houses  and  the  appointment 
of  police  matrons  would  in  some  measure  protect  these 
children  and  mitigate  the  e\dls  to  which  they  are  now 
exposed." 

The  Grand  Jury  apparently  took  cognizance  of  this 
strong  appeal,  for  among  Mrs.  Lowell's  papers  is  a  printed 
copy  of  an  act  amending  the  Police  Matrons  Law  of  1888, 
which  provides,  in  Section  7,  that  the  ''Board  of  Estimate 
and  Apportionment  in  said  City  of  New  York  is  hereby 
authorized  and  empowered  to  reopen  the  budget  for  the 
year  1891  in  order  to  include  therein  the  estimates  neces- 
sary to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  this  act  in  said  city.'' 

At  this  time,  some  of  the  leading  New  York  papers 
came  to  the  support  of  the  women's  crusade  for  police 
matrons.  The  Sun,  under  the  caption  ''Women's  Side 
of  It,"  published  in  its  issue  of  January  4,  1891,  a  strong 
and  ably  written  two-column  article,  in  which  are  described 
the  scenes  of  degradation  and  misery  discovered  by  a 
philanthropic  woman,  a  member  of  the  Women's  Chris- 
tian Temperance  Union,  in  the  station  houses  of  Phila- 
delphia three  years  before,  and  of  her  successful  efforts 
there  for  the  appointment  of  police  matrons,  and  adds 
''In  New  York,  such  women  as  Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw 
Lowell,  Mrs.  Mary  T.  Burt,  Miss  Grace  Dodge,  Mrs. 
E.  B.  Grannis,  and  others  equally  well  known,  are  inter- 
esting themselves  in  this  work.  They  have  visited  the 
station  houses  and  seen  scenes  of  depravity  and  misery 
which,  if  decency  would  permit  being  printed  in  detail, 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  329 

would  arouse  the  indignation  of  all  humane  people." 
Further  reference  was  made  in  this  article  to  conditions 
in  the  station  houses  of  New  York,  and  to  the  brutal 
treatment  recently  experienced  in  one  of  them  by  a  young 
girl  picked  up  insensible  in  the  street.  ^^All  night  she  sat 
with  wild  frightened  eyes,  listening  to  the  oaths  and  ribald 
jests  of  the  women  in  the  corridor.  The  next  morning, 
Mrs.  Lowell  saw  her  standing  behind  the  bar  and  listening 
to  the  charge  against  her.  .  .  .  She  was  sent  back  to 
the  cell  on  false  charges  for  another  night,  and  then 
allowed  to  go  back  to  her  husband  and  baby  ruined  in 
reputation.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Lowell  investigated  the  case  and 
found  the  woman  in  every  way  thoroughly  respectable  and 
above  reproach." 

Courage  and  perseverance  triumphed,  the  budget  for 
1891  was  reopened  to  make  provision  for  the  appointment 
of  police  matrons,  and  the  good  women  of  New  York  had 
won  another  notable  victory  for  humanity,  over  official 
ignorance  and  neglect.  Since  it  was  essential  to  the  suc- 
cess of  the  experiment  that  suitable  women  should  be 
appointed,  Mrs.  Lowell  and  her  associates  prepared  the 
examination  papers,  which,  pursuant  to  the  Civil  Service 
regulations,  were  to  be  filled  out  and  submitted  by  the 
applicants,  and  drafted  the  rules  to  be  observed  by  the 
matrons  appointed. 

Miss  Ellen  Collins,  who  was  associated  with  Mrs.  Lowell 
in  this  as  in  others  of  her  philanthropic  activities,  recalls 
that  she  and  Mrs.  Lowell  were  requested  to  attend  the 
first  examination  conducted  under  the  Civil  Service  rules, 
at  which  a  number  of  capable  women  who  had  followed 


330  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  movement  with  sympathy,  presented  themselves  as 
candidates.  The  questions  were  intended  to  bring  out, 
in  strong  rehef,  the  individual  characters  of  the  applicants. 
Memoranda  made  as  the  examination  progressed  were 
compared  and  tabulated  on  its  conclusion.  Mrs.  Lowell 
and  Miss  Collins  paid  particular  attention  to  the  per- 
sonality of  the  women,  and  endeavored  to  ascertain  their 
motives  in  applying  for  the  appointments.  Their  reports 
were  presented,  and  included  in  the  records  from  which 
the  first  appointments  of  pohce  matrons  in  New  York 
City  were  made.  Reference  to  this  examination'  was 
made  in  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell  to  her  sister-in-law : 

120  East  30th  Street,  May  1,  1891. 
Dear  Annie  : 

Last  week  Ellen  Collins  (a  friend  of  ours  ever  since  the 
war,  when  we  were  together  in  the  Sanitary  Committee 
work)  and  I,  spent  three  days  helping  the  Civil  Service 
Board  examine  120  women  applicants  for  Police  Matron- 
ship,  of  which  there  will  probably  be  twelve  appointed 
at  most.  We  talked  to  each  one  and  asked  her  questions, 
based  on  her  written  answers  in  an  examination  paper, 
and  you  may  imagine  that  we  were  pretty  well  exhausted. 
There  were  28  who  were  really  first  rate,  about  30  who 
were  good,  and  the  rest  were  ^'fair  to  middling"  only.  It 
was  interesting  and  encouraging  to  see  the  way  in  which 
the  work  of  the  Civil  Service  Board  is  carried  on.  All 
Police  officers  have  to  go  through  a  severe  examination, 
and  only  those  who  pass  the  highest  are  sent  to  the  Board 
of  Police,  75,  if  they  want  50,  and  if  the  Board  skips 
anyone,  they  are  obhged  to  give  their  reasons  in  writing. 
The  Secretary  told  us  that  the  character  of  the  appUcants 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  331 

had  risen  100  per  cent  since  they  first  began,  about  six 
years  ago.  The  worthless  ones  find  they  cannot  go  through 
and  so  they  stay  away. 

The  Sun  continued  to  the  pohce  matrons  the  valu- 
able support  it  gave  to  the  movement  for  their  appoint- 
ment, and  on  November  1,  1891,  pubhshed  an  article, 
^'What  the  Matron  Does,"  describing  an  inspection  made 
of  the  EHzabeth  Street  Station,  by  a  representative  of  that 
newspaper,  accompanied  by  the  matron  on  duty,  in  which 
a  favorable  accoimt  was  given  of  the  improved  care  given 
the  women  prisoners,  and  from  which  the  following  ex- 
cerpts are  made: 

Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell's  recent  letter  to  the 
Police  Commissioners,  complaining  that  the  work  required 
of  the  Matrons  recently  appointed  to  several  police  sta- 
tions, to  look  after  women  prisoners,  was  too  severe,  and 
that  their  hours  of  duty  were  too  long,  has  brought  up  the 
question  whether  or  not  the  new  system  is  a  failure.  The 
Matrons  are  on  duty  fourteen  hours  consecutively,  and 
this  means  twenty-eight  rounds  among  the  cells,  and  the 
climbing  of  many  flights  of  stairs  each  night.  The  rooms 
assigned  them,  Mrs.  Lowell  says,  are  cold  and  cheerless 
and  too  near  the  men's  quarters.  .  .  .  The  Commis- 
sioners did  not  look  with  favor  upon  the  Police  Matron 
project  when  it  was  first  urged  by  charitable  women ;  .  .  . 
however,  they  made  the  experiment,  and  now  regard 
Mrs.  Lowell's  complaint  with  little  sympathy.  .  .  .  The 
Matron  who  led  the  way  was  bright-faced  and  cheerful. 
She  was  very  neat  in  a  well  fitting  street  dress.  She  seemed 
to  take  some  pride  in  her  little  room,  poor  as  it  was.  She 
pulled  out  the  drawer  of  the  table  and  displayed  stores  of 


332  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

cotton  cloth  torD  to  the  size  and  shape  of  small  towels, 
and  reels  of  coarse  cotton  thread  with  needles  stuck  in 
them.  '^For  the  poor  women/'  she  said  smiling.  '^Mrs. 
Lowell  keeps  us  supplied  with  this.  Almost  all  the  women 
prisoners  who  come  here  are  poor  unfortunates,  you  know. 
Most  of  them  are  drunk  and  their  clothes  —  what  they 
have,  poor  things  —  are  often  torn  and  dreadfully  ragged. 
I  sew  up  the  rents  enough  to  make  them  respectable 
before  they  go  out  in  the  streets  again,  and  then  I  give 
each  of  them  some  of  this  thread  and  a  needle  or  two, 
so  they  do  some  patching  themselves.  These  cloths  are  for 
towels.  Mrs.  Lowell  supplies  us  with  them  too."  Then 
the  matron  took  down  from  a  shelf  a  number  of  packages. 
''Smell  that,''  said  she  laughing.  ''Isn't  that  good?" 
The  package  contained  coffee.  "And  here  is  a  supply  of 
sugar,"  she  continued,  "and  here  is  tea  and  here  are  cans 
of  condensed  milk.  Oh,  we  have  lots  of  good  things  here 
for  the  poor  women,  and  you've  no  idea  how  much  good 
it  does  them.  Mrs.  Lowell  sends  them  all ;  and  just  read 
that  little  letter  she  sends  us,  telling  us  to  let  her  know 
when  we  want  more." 

The  friendly  interest  of  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the  matrons 
and  their  charges  was  continued  by  subsequent  visits 
to  the  station  houses,  for  many  years,  and  by  interviews 
and  meetings  at  her  own  house ;  and  there  as  everywhere, 
her  strong  and  attractive  personality  was  helpful  to  all  she 
met.  A  semi-official  character  was  given  these  visits 
by  Mrs.  Lowell's  membership  of  the  Women's  Prison  Re- 
form Committee,  and  she  preserved  her  card  of  admission 
to  the  city  prisons,  bearing  date  March  25,  1904,  signed 
by  W.  McAdoo,  Police  Commissioner.  Among  her 
papers  on  the  subject  of  PoHce  Matrons,  is  the  following 


WORK  FOR  POLICE  MATRONS  333 

brief  statement,  written  in  ink  in  her  large,  firm  hand,  to 
which  she  had  given  additional  and  imusual  emphasis,  for 
such  a  paper,  by  her  signatm'e : 

The  change  in  the  station  houses  where  the  matrons 
are,  since  their  appointment  is  simply  indescribable. 
Now  everything  is  quiet,  orderly,  almost  pleasant.  It  used 
to  be  horrible  to  find  the  drunken  men  and  women  pris- 
oners in  contiguous  cells,  perfectly  audible  to  each  other, 
and  under  the  charge  of  men. 

There  are  fourteen  ( ?)  station  houses  in  New  York  City 
and  eight  ( ?)  in  Brooklyn,  designated  to  receive  women 
prisoners,  each  with  a  matron  constantly  on  duty.  The 
majority  of  the  matrons  have  been  in  the  service  six  or 
seven  years,  and  do  very  well.  They  have  all  been  ap- 
pointed after  competitive  examinations.  There  are  no 
female  lodgers  (or  men  either)  now  received  in  the  station 
houses. 

August,  1898.  J.  S.  Lowell. 

With  which  song  of  thanksgiving  is  closed  the  chapter 
of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  for  Police  Matrons. 


CHAPTER    XVI 
The  Consumers'  League 

The  bad  conditions  under  which  many  working  women 
and  cash  girls  were  earning  their  Hving  in  the  City  of 
New  York  led  them  to  hold  a  series  of  meetings  in  1886 
for  the  discussion  of  these  evils,  with  the  hope  of  finding  a 
way  to  end  them.  Mrs.  Lowell  and  her  friend,  Miss  L.  S. 
W.  Perkins,  hearing  of  this  movement  on  the  East  Side 
of  the  city,  attended  one  of  the  first  meetings,  and  because 
of  their  interest  and  helpfulness,  although  not  themselves 
wage-earners,  were  welcomed  at  the  succeeding  discussions 
to  which  no  other  outsiders  were  invited  and  no  reporters 
admitted. 

Women  of  different  trades  and  occupations  told  directly 
and  simply  of  their  daily  experiences,  of  many  things  in 
their  places  of  employment  done  in  defiance  of  law,  of  the 
dangers,  moral  and  physical,  amid  which  they  worked, 
and  of  their  fears  of  loss  of  position,  or  threatened  loss 
of  character,  keeping  them  silent,  even  when  to  bad  sur- 
roundings was  added  personal  insult.  These  stories  were 
heard  with  sympathy  and  with  respect  for  the  stalwart 
and  upright  views  expressed,  and  for  the  high  standard 
of  honor  and  generosity  which  characterized  both  the 
speakers  and  their  fellow-workers  assembled  at  these 
meetings.     The  helplessness  of   these  women   to   cope 

334 


THE  CONSUMERS'  LEAGUE  335 

unorganized  with  the  grave  problems  confronting  them, 
and  without  the  force  of  well-informed  pubUc  opinion 
behind  them,  seized  upon  Mrs.  Lowell  at  this  time  and 
engaged  her  lasting  interest.  Out  of  these  meetings  grew 
the  Working  Women's  Society,  organized  in  1886,  of  which 
she  was  a  friend  and  counsellor. 

Being  convinced  that  some  of  the  existing  evils  might 
be  remedied  by  the  appointment  of  women  factory  in- 
spectors, to  whom  women  might  freely  speak  of  things 
they  shrank  from  telling  a  man  inspector,  Mrs.  Lowell  was 
active  in  securing  the  passage  by  the  Legislature  of  New 
York  of  the  first  law  on  any  statute  book  giving  working 
women  such  protection.  While  the  measure  was  under 
consideration,  letters  were  received  by  Mrs.  Lowell  and 
others  telling  of  unlawful  working  conditions ;  pitiful  tales 
they  were,  of  locked  doors  in  tenement  house  factories 
with  workers  on  the  sixth  floor,  with  no  fire-escapes,  and 
no  water  above  the  third  floor,  of  narrow,  unsafe  stairs, 
of  unsanitary  conditions,  and  of  insult.  Mrs.  Lowell  was 
active  and  helpful,  both  with  her  time  and  her  means, 
especially  in  some  of  the  early  strikes  for  improved  con- 
ditions, and  often  presided  at  meetings,  both  public  and 
private.  No  complaints  were  disregarded,  and  for  many 
abuses  remedies  were  found. 

The  work  of  the  Society  continued,  and  in  the  winter 
of  1889-1890  it  investigated  the  conditions  under  which 
saleswomen  and  cash  girls  were  working  in  the  City  of 
New  York,  and  in  its  report  showed  them  to  be  unsatis- 
factory in  many  of  the  large  stores.  Thereupon  the  So- 
ciety interested  clergymen  and  philanthropists  in  the  sub- 


336  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ject,  and  under  their  auspices  was  held  a  large  public 
meeting  in  May,  1890,  at  Chickering  Hall,  on  the  corner 
of  Fifth  Avenue  and  Eighteenth  Street,  "to  consider  the 
condition  of  working  women  in  New  York  retail  stores."  A 
report  was  made  to  the  meeting  by  Miss  Alice  Woodbridge, 
for  the  Society,  embodying  the  results  of  the  investigation 
and  presenting  the  following  conclusions : 

"First.  We  find  the  hours  are  often  excessive,  and  em- 
ployees are  not  paid  for  overtime.  Second.  We  find  the}'- 
often  work  under  unwholesome  sanitary  conditions.  Third. 
We  find  numbers  of  children  under  age  employed  for  ex- 
cessive hours,  and  at  work  far  beyond  their  strength. 
Fourth.  We  find  that  long  and  faithful  service  does  not 
meet  with  consideration ;  on  the  contrary,  service  for  a 
certain  number  of  years  is  a  reason  for  dismissal.  It  has 
become  the  rule  in  some  stores  not  to  keep  any  one  over 
five  years,  fearing  that  the  employees  may  think  they 
have  a  claim  upon  the  firm,  or  in  other  words,  that  they 
will  expecfc  to  have  their  salaries  raised.  Fifth.  The  wages, 
which  are  low,  are  often  reduced  by  excessive  fines.  Sixth. 
We  find  the  law  requiring  seats  for  saleswomen  generally 
ignored ;  in  a  few  places  one  seat  is  provided  at  a  counter 
where  fifteen  girls  are  employed,  and  in  one  store  seats 
are  provided  and  saleswomen  are  fined  if  found  sitting. 
In  all  our  inquiries  in  regard  to  sanitary  conditions  and 
long  hours  of  standing,  and  the  effect  upon  the  health, 
the  invariable  reply  is  that  after  two  years  the  strongest 
suffer  injury." 

It  was  the  sentiment  of  those  present  at  this  mass 
meeting  that  the  working  girls  themselves  would  be  un- 
able to  secure  needed  reforms,  for  if  they  made  complaint. 


THE  CONSUMERS^  LEAGUE  337 

others  would  be  found  to  take  their  places,  and  that  they 
were,  as  a  class,  too  young  and  unskilled  to  make  the 
formation  of  trades-unions  among  them  either  practicable 
or  useful.  The  remedy  could  be  found  by  the  organization 
of  shoppers  or  consumers.  The  meeting  therefore  adopted 
the  following  resolution : 

^'Resolved,  That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  assist 
the  Working  Women  ^s  Society  in  making  a  list  which 
shall  keep  shoppers  informed  of  such  shops  as  deal  justly 
with  their  employees,  and  so  bring  public  opinion  and  pub- 
lic action  to  bear  in  favor  of  just  employers,  and  also  in 
favor  of  such  employers  as  desire  to  be  just,  but  are  pre- 
vented by  the  stress  of  competition  from  following  their 
own  sense  of  duty." 

Authority  was  also  given  to  the  chairman  of  the  mass 
meeting  to  appoint  a  committee  to  sit  with  a  committee  of 
the  Working  Women's  Society  to  consider  and  take  action 
upon  the  subject.  The  joint  committee  decided  to  form 
an  association  to  be  called  '^  The  Consumers'  League  of  the 
City  of  New  York,"  and  spent  much  time  in  the  work  of 
organization  and  in  the  formulation  of  principles.  These 
were  fully  set  forth  in  a  pamphlet  of  some  thirty-one 
pages  written  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  entitled  "Consumers' 
Leagues,"  and  pubHshed  by  the  Christian  Social  Union, 
February  15,  1898,  in  which  she  explained  the  situation 
of  the  working  girls,  and  the  objects  of  the  League. 

"Employers  may  be  divided  into  two  classes:  those 
who  employ  directly  and  those  who  employ  indirectly. 
The  direct  employers,  those  who  pay  the  wages  and  who 


338  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

seem  to  fix  the  conditions  under  which  their  employees 
work,  are  often  as  helpless  as  the  employees  themselves  to 
change  those  conditions,  because  of  the  demands  of  the 
indirect  employers.  These  last  are  the  consumers,  that 
is,  the  whole  purchasing  public,  and,  little  as  they  think 
it,  they  have  the  power  to  secure  just  and  humane  con- 
ditions of  labor  if  they  would  only  use  it.  In  order  to 
induce  them  to  use  this  power,  it  is  necessary  to  show 
them  how,  and  as  a  first  step  they  must  be  made  to  feel 
their  responsibility,  must  be  made  to  realize  that  it  is 
for  the  supply  of  their  wants  that  all  business  of  the  world 
is  carried  on,  and  that  their  demands,  however  uncon- 
sciously to  themselves,  are  actually  the  cause  of  the  evils 
from  which  working-men,  women  and  children  suffer. 
The  rage  of  the  purchasing  public  for  cheap  goods  is 
the  awful  power  which  crushes  the  life  out  of  the  working 
people,  and  it  is  strange  that  men  and  women  who  would 
shrink  with  horror  from  buying  stolen  goods  will  congratu- 
late themselves  on  buying  cheap  goods,  one  necessary 
element  of  whose  cheapness  is  that  part  of  the  working 
time  of  other  men  and  women,  and  even  of  children, 
has  practically  been  stolen. 

^^The  great  difficulty  which  has  presented  itself  to 
conscientious  individuals  who  desire  not  to  take  part  in 
the  oppression  of  their  fellow-men  by  buying  goods  made 
and  sold  under  inhuman  conditions  has  always  been  that 
of  learning  what  those  conditions  were.  It  was  easy 
enough  for  the  abolitionists  to  give  up  the  use  of  sugar 
and  cotton,  because  these  were  known  to  be  slave-made, 
but  the  conditions  of  so  called  free  labor  are  more  com- 
plicated, and  in  order  to  learn  where  and  how  the  goods 
they  desire  to  purchase  are  made,  it  is  necessary  to  have 
concerted  action,  and  from  this  necessity  was  developed 
the  idea  of  the  Consumers'  League. " 


THE  CONSUMERS'  LEAGUE  339 

In  the  practical  work  of  forming  the  League,  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  active,  and  was  elected  its  first  President. 
Cooperating  with  her  on  the  committee  were,  among 
others.  Dr.  Mary  Putnam  Jacobi,  Mrs.  Helen  Campbell, 
and  Mrs.  Frederick  Nathan,  now  President  of  the  League. 
In  a  letter  dated  March  7,  1898,  Mrs.  Lowell  said:  ''I 
wonder  if  I  wrote  you  about  the  '  Consumers'  League, '  our 
shop  society  ?  I  am  President  of  that  and  I  never  meant 
to  be  and  I  mean  to  be  out  of  it  next  January  without 
fail." 

Early  in  1891  the  League  was  ready  to  begin  operations. 
Before  its  formation,  the  Working  Women's  Society  had 
drawn  up  a  ^'Standard  of  a  Fair  House,"  founded  upon 
the  business  methods  of  some  of  the  best  firms  in  New 
York.  This,  with  some  modifications,  was  adopted  by 
the  League  as  the  standard  of  excellence  by  which  it 
would  test  all  shops  before  placing  them  on  a  ''White 
List,"  which  was  to  contain  the  names  of  such  retail  mer- 
cantile houses  only  as  in  the  opinion  of  the  Governing 
Board  of  the  League  should  be  patronized  by  its  members, 
and  was  to  be  published  at  stated  intervals  in  the  daily 
papers.  At  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  standard, 
there  were  only  eight  of  the  large  department  stores  in 
the  City  of  New  York  apparently  entitled  under  its  rules 
to  a  place  on  the  white  list. 

Printed  notices  had  been  sent  to  all  the  firms  in  the 
business  directory  of  dry  goods  stores,  fancy  notions,  etc., 
asking  if  they  would  permit  their  conditions  to  be  inves- 
tigated in  order  that  they  might  be  placed  on  a  white  list 
and  advertised  as  houses  which  treated  their  employees 


340  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

kindly,  and  approached  nearest  to  the  League's  standard 
of  a  fair  house.  As  satisfactory  replies  to  the  circular 
were  not  received  in  sufficient  numbers,  Mrs.  Lowell  and 
Mrs.  Nathan  paid  personal  visits  to  leading  firms  to  ex- 
plain the  objects  of  the  League  more  fully,  and  to  invite 
their  cooperation.  They  explained  the  rules  and  regula- 
tions which  they  had  found  in  operation  in  eight  of  the 
leading  dry  goods  firms,  which  in  the  opinion  of  the  League 
were  reasonable  and  fair,  and  took  the  position  that  it 
was  only  just  that  all  competing  firms  should  adopt  the 
same  fair  conditions  for  their  employees. 

The  first  white  list  was  published  as  an  advertise- 
ment in  a  leading  newspaper,  and  copies  sent  broadcast 
to  those  interested  in  working  girls,  asking  their  help  in  the 
efi'ort  of  the  League  to  raise  the  standard  of  conditions 
in  the  shops  by  patronizing  only  those  on  the  white 
list.  Difficulties  were  encountered  however,  and  it  was 
sometimes  reported  that  certain  firms  did  not  wish  to  be 
put  on  the  white  list.  When  this  occurred,  Mrs. 
Lowell  is  quoted  as  having  said:  ^^We  can't  help  that, 
we  are  sorry  they  don't  approve  of  the  League.  But  we 
will  get  information  from  the  working  girls  themselves, 
and  if  the  firms  have  good  conditions  and  are  just,  they 
must  go  on  the  white  list." 

Mrs.  Nathan  recalls  a  conversation  that  occurred  on  a 
visit  of  investigation  she  and  Mrs.  Lowell  were  making 
for  the  League  to  a  dry  goods  firm.  They  ascertained  that 
the  cash  girls  were  paid  only  one  dollar  and  a  half  a 
week,  and  Mrs.  Lowell  asked  one  of  the  partners  if  he 
did  not  think  that  was  very  little.     He  said:  *'It  is  a 


THE  CONSUMERS'   LEAGUE  341 

question  of  economics.  If  we  can  hire  girls  at  one  dollar 
and  a  half,  why  should  we  pay  any  more?  Plenty  are 
willing  to  come  for  that  price."  Mrs.  Lowell  then  asked : 
'^Do  you  think  that  is  a  fair  wage  to  pay  for  a  week's 
work?  One  dollar  and  fifty  cents  a  week  will  scarcely 
pay  for  their  shoe  leather."  He  replied:  ''Well,  I  tell 
you,  if  I  see  they  are  very  ragged  or  poor  looking,  or 
need  shoes,  I  give  them  a  pair  of  shoes."  To  which  Mrs. 
Lowell  rejoined:  ''Would  it  not  be  better  to  pay  them 
a  fair  wage  and  let  them  buy  their  own  shoes,  better  for 
their  self-respect?"  "We  never  confuse  our  charity  and 
our  business,"  he  rephed.  Mrs.  Lowell  closed  the  con- 
versation with  the  remark :  "It  seems  to  me  that  you  are 
confusing  them  in  a  very  peculiar  way.  I  think  it  would 
be  a  great  deal  better  for  you  to  pay  a  fair  wage." 

The  Consumers'  League  of  the  City  of  New  York,  whose 
beginnings  have  been  here  outlined,  has  grown  in  useful- 
ness, and  now  receives  a  large  measure  of  pubUc  support. 
International  recognition  was  accorded  it  by  the  award 
of  a  Gold  Medal  at  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1900.  To  the 
pioneer  work  of  this  httle  group  of  humane  women  must 
be  credited  the  formation  of  some  sixty-four  consumers' 
leagues  in  other  states  and  cities  of  the  Union,  and  also 
of  the  National  Consumers'  League,  whose  chief  object 
is  the  abolition  of  the  sweat-shop  with  all  its  attendant 
evils,  such  as  child-labor,  long  hours  of  work,  starvation 
wages,  unhygienic  environment,  and  the  menace  to  the 
consumer  of  purchasing  germ-infested  garments. 

The  National  Consumers'  League  gives  the  use  of  its 
label  to'  those  manufacturers  who  agree  in  writing  to  have 


342  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

all  their  goods  made  on  their  premises,  to  employ  no  chil- 
dren under  sixteen,  and  to  exact  no  night  work.  This 
label  is  the  best  guarantee  that  the  goods  in  question  have 
been  made  under  clean  and  wholesome  conditions. 

The  first  consumers'  league  in  England  was  organized 
in  1890,  coincidently  with  the  similar  movement  in  New 
York  in  which  Mrs.  Lowell  was  a  leader.  France,  Holland, 
and  Switzerland  now  have  such  leagues,  and  efforts  are 
being  made  to  organize  one  in  Germany.  Mrs.  Lowell 
expressed  her  satisfaction  with  the  work  of  the  League 
when  in  February,  1894,  she  wrote  and  published  the 
following  paragraphs  in  her  report  as  President  of  the 
Governing  Board  : 

^^The  part  of  the  community  which  the  Consumers' 
League  is  intended  to  serve  is  a  very  important  part. 
Almost  all  people  who  take  an  interest  in  helping  their 
fellow-men  have  to  deal  with  people  who  have  failed  in 
life,  with  people  who  are  sick  or  weak  or  wicked,  people 
who  have  not  been  equal  to  the  struggle,  but  have  fallen 
by  the  way  for  one  reason  or  another.  But  these  work- 
ing women  have  not  failed ;  they  are  bravely  working  and 
bravely  striving.  They  belong  to  the  class,  who  by  head 
work  and  hand  work,  by  intelligence  or  strength  or  skill, 
are  keeping  the  world  alive,  clothing,  feeding,  housing 
themselves  and  everybody  else.  Of  course  we  must  not 
fall  into  the  error  of  thinking  that  the  handworkers  pro- 
duce all  the  wealth  of  the  world,  but  it  is  simply  a  truism 
to  say  that  the  workers  produce  all  the  wealth,  since  those 
who  do  not  work  produce  nothing,  and  the  working  women 
do  at  least  their  share  in  the  work  of  the  world. 


THE  CONSUMERS'   LEAGUE  343 

''Besides  our  gratitude,  however,  for  the  services  they 
render,  they  deserve  our  pity,  because  of  their  helpless- 
ness and  the  peculiar  hardships  to  which  they  are  exposed. 
They  are  helpless  because  they  are  women,  and  they  are 
helpless  also  because  they  are  young,  and  they  are  more- 
over exposed  to  peculiar  temptations  from  the  fact  that, 
when  wages  fall  below  the  living  point,  the  wages  of  sin 
are  always  ready  for  them. 

''There  are  said  to  be  two  hundred  thousand  working- 
women  in  New  York  City,  and  if  the  Consumers'  League 
can  help  to  raise  the  standard  of  the  conditions  among 
which  those  who  work  in  retail  shops  are  required  to  labor, 
it  will  have  done  something  towards  raising  the  standard 
for  all.^' 

The  report  of  the  Governing  Board  for  1895,  also  pre- 
sumably written  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  presents  clearly  the 
reasons  for  the  existence  of  the  League,  shows  the  progress 
of  its  work,  and  contains  a  discussion  of  the  relations  of 
employers  and  employees  too  valuable  to  be  omitted 
here: 

"It  may  be  asked  why,  if  the  Consumers'  League 
believes  in  the  organization  of  wage-earners  for  self- 
help,  and  if,  as  it  appears,  there  exists  an  organization 
of  retail  clerks  to  do  for  themselves  exactly  what  the 
Consumers'  League  undertakes  to  do  for  them,  should  the 
Consumers'  League  continue  in  existence?  The  answer 
is  to  be  found  in  the  peculiar  circumstances  and  condi- 
tions of  large  numbers  of  the  wage-earners  in  this  par- 
ticular kind  of  employment,  and  also  in  the  direct  contact 


344  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  large  numbers  of  the  consuming  public  with  them  — 
two  facts  which  make  such  help  both  necessary  and  pos- 
sible. 

''The  peculiar  circumstances  and  conditions  of  the 
wage-earners  for  whose  benefit  the  Consumers'  League 
exists  are  three : 

"First  —  They  are  all  women;  and  consequently 
usually  timid  and  unaccustomed  to  associated  action. 

''Second  —  They  are  young,  many  being  between  the 
ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty;  and  therefore  without  the 
wisdom,  strength  of  character,  or  experience  which  would 
enable  them  to  act  in  their  own  behalf. 

"Third  —  Their  trade,  although  it  has  highly  skilled 
departments,  is  mostly  unskilled,  and  therefore  there  is 
an  almost  unlimited  supply  of  applicants  for  their  sit- 
uations in  case  they  do  not  accept  the  conditions  offered 
them. 

"These,  then,  are  the  reasons  for  the  existence  of  the 
Consumers'  League. 

"The  peculiar  relation  of  these  women  and  young 
girls  to  the  purchasing  public  (that  they  serve  them  di- 
rectly and  personally  and  are  brought  into  immediate 
contact  with  them,  instead  of  being  shut  away  from 
sight  and  knowledge  in  factories)  has  made  it  possible 
to  appeal  to  the  conscience  of  the  purchasing  public  in 
their  behalf ;  and  this  appeal  has  resulted  in  the  formation 
of  the  Consumers'  League. 

"This  fact,  however,  has  also  acted  in  a  contrary  direc- 
tion in  preventing  them  from  receiving  the  protection  of 
the  State,  which  has  been  extended  over  women  and  girls 


THE  CONSUMERS'  LEAGUE  345 

working  in  factories.  Because  they  were  constantly  in 
the  pubUc  gaze,  the  conditions  of  their  work  could  not 
become  so  very  bad  as  those  possible  in  factories ;  there- 
fore the  attention  of  philanthropists  and  labor  leaders 
was  not  attracted  to  them  until  the  standard  in  regard 
to  factory  workers  had  been  so  far  improved  by  factory 
laws  and  factory  inspection  that  the  long  hours  and  fa- 
tiguing work  of  saleswomen  seemed  bad  by  contrast, 
and  then  attempts  to  improve  their  conditions  were  under- 
taken and  the  struggle  to  give  them  the  benefit  of  State 
inspection  and  State  protection  has  now  been  going  on 
in  New  York  for  four  years.  .  .  . 

'^The  Governing  Board  has  made  special  efforts  to 
increase  the  number  of  names  on  its  White  List  during 
the  past  year.  It  has  appealed  to  firms  which  almost 
reached  the  necessary  standard,  hoping  that  they  might 
be  persuaded  to  do  the  few  things  which  are  absolutely 
required  in  order  to  be  placed  on  the  List,  and  it  has  also 
been  more  active  in  inspecting  shops.  One  of  the  members 
caused  to  be  prepared  a  list  of  '  Retail  Stores  in  New  York 
City  where  are  employed  twenty-five  saleswomen  or 
over,'  which  shows  that  there  are  73  houses  in  this  class ; 
of  these,  56  have  been  inspected  by  Committees  of  the 
Consumers'  League,  and  there  are  only  19  of  these  larger 
shops  on  the  White  List.  To  facilitate  the  work  of  the 
Committee,  a  printed  form  has  been  drawn  up,  and  it 
is  now  required  that  reports  be  made  on  these  forms. 
In  this  way  there  is  uniformity  of  information  gathered 
about  each  establishment,  and  general  statements  are 
not  accepted  by  the  Board.     The  large  establishments 


346  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

of  dressmakers  and  milliners  have  not  as  yet  been  visited 
at  all  by  the  Committees  of  the  Board. 

'^Special  efforts  have  also  been  made  to  advertise  the 
White  List.  Besides  being  advertised  in  the  daily  papers, 
it  was  printed  on  postal  cards,  and  4000  were  sent  to 
selected  names  taken  from  the  Social  Register  in  June. 
In  December  it  was  printed,  with  the  'Standard  of  a 
Fair  House,'  and  the  names  of  the  Governing  Board, 
and  7000  copies  were  distributed  in  the  daily  newspapers 
by  dealers.  At  the  same  time  it  was  placed,  by  permis- 
sion of  the  managers  of  twenty  of  the  largest  hotels, 
in  the  ladies'  parlors,  in  a  neat  cover,  marked  with  the 
name  of  the  League. 

''The  Board  has  again  devoted  special  attention  to  the 
question  of  overtime,  and  has  made  repeated  efforts  to 
persuade  all  the  largest  houses  to  pay  for  all  work  required 
of  their  female  employees  after  6  p.m.,  whether  on  Satur- 
days throughout  the  year  or  at  the  holiday  season. 

"An  interesting  computation  of  the  number  of  hours 
of  unpaid  work  given  by  the  employees  to  their  employers, 
in  the  case  of  sixteen  of  the  largest  dry  goods  houses 
in  the  city,  has  been  made  by  a  member  of  the  Board. 
She  has  multipUed  the  number  of  employees  of  each  firm 
by  the  number  of  days  at  the  hoHday  season,  during 
which,  according  to  their  advertisements,  their  respective 
shops  would  be  open  in  the  evening,  and  this  again  by 
four  (the  number  of  hours  from  6  to  10  p.m.),  and  the  result 
is  very  astonishing.  It  shows  that  in  the  aggregate  these 
sixteen  firms  demanded  and  received  at  the  holiday 
season  of  1895  at  least  600,200  hours  of  free  labor  —  or 


THE  CONSUMERS^  LEAGUE  347 

60,020  working  days  of  10  hours  each,  which  is  191  years 
and  some  months.  This  is  the  Christmas  present  made 
by  the  employees  to  their  employers.  .  .  .  Besides  this, 
many  shops  received  also  from  each  of  their  employees 
a  gift  of  four  hours  every  Satiu"day  evening  throughout 
the  year. 

''The  large  employers  will  say  it  is  untrue  to  call  this 
work  at  the  holiday  season  a  gift  to  them,  contending, 
as  they  do,  that  the  extra  hours'  work  on  Saturdays 
throughout  the  year  and  for  one  or  two  weeks  at  the  holi- 
day time  are  'nominated  in  the  bond,'  or  are,  at  least, 
considered  in  the  wages  paid ;  but  as  many  of  these  young 
girls  receive  fifty  cents  a  day  or  less  for  an  ordinary  day's 
work  from  8  a.m.  to  6  p.m.  (with  half  an  hour  for  lunch), 
it  seems  but  reasonable  to  contend  in  their  name  that  the 
wages  could  scarcely  be  lower,  even  were  there  no  over- 
work. If  bricklayers,  whose  wages  are  fifty  cents  an 
hour,  call  all  work  after  5  p.m.  overtime,  for  which  they 
receive  double  pay,  it  is  not  inadmissible  to  call  the  hours 
demanded  of  cash  girls  and  saleswomen  after  6  p.m.  on 
Saturdays  and  at  the  holiday  season  overtime,  and  ask 
that  they  shall  have  for  those  hours  at  least  the  same  pay 
they  receive  for  four  hours  of  work  by  daylight,  and  enough 
besides  to  pay  for  the  extra  supper  they  must  buy  when 
kept  after  6  p.m.,  since  they  cannot  go  home  to  eat  it.  .  .  . 

"The  Board  would  suggest  to  all  owners  of  buildings, 
in  which  business  is  carried  on,  that  they  are  morally 
responsible  for  the  manner  in  which  it  is  conducted  and 
for  the  welfare  of  the  men  and  women  employed  in  them, 
at  least  while  they  are  not  able  to  protect  themselves. 


348  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

It  is  especially  necessary  that  the  interests  of  the  employ- 
ees of  shops  should  be  considered  by  private  individuals, 
because  from  the  peculiar  relation  of  the  large  shopkeepers 
to  the  newspapers  and  the  dependence  of  the  latter  upon 
the  former  it  is  impossible  to  secure  any  public  statement 
of  their  case,  the  editors  being  unable  to  publish  facts 
that  would  injure  the  interests  of  their  advertisers. 

''The  purchasing  public  is  undoubtedly  responsible 
for  the  long  hours  of  labor  demanded  of  thousands  of 
women  and  girls  in  this  city,  and  the  Governing  Board 
appeals  to  shoppers  in  the  closing  words  of  an  address 
read  by  one  of  its  members  to  a  church  society  of  ladies, 
as  follows : 

"  To  sum  up,  what  we  ask  you  to  do  is  this :  Shop  during 
reasonable  hours  —  when  possible,  early  in  the  morning, 
when  saleswomen  are  fresh  and  not  tired  out  and  nervous. 
Avoid  making  purchases  of  a  Saturday  afternoon,  so  that 
eventually  the  shops  may  all  give  a  half  holiday.  Make 
your  holiday  purchases  early  in  the  season  if  possible. 
Make  constant  inquiries  as  to  proper  provision  of  seats, 
and  request  floor  walkers  to  encourage  saleswomen  to 
sit  down  when  not  waiting  on  customers.  Report  to 
the  League  any  information  gleaned  outside  the  shops 
from  working  girls,  whether  favorable  or  unfavorable 
to  employers.  Become  members  of  the  League  and  per- 
suade your  friends  to  join  also.  If  at  any  time  you  may 
feel  irritated  or  annoyed  by  the  apparent  indifference  or 
carelessness  of  saleswomen,  stop  and  consider  what  it 
means  to  be  on  one^s  feet  from  ten  to  fourteen  hours  a 
day,  in  a  crowded  space,  shoved  and  pushed  about,  lift- 


THE  CONSUMERS'  LEAGUE  349 

ing  heavy  boxes  at  times,  waiting  on  impatient  customers 
and  customers  who  wish  to  be  helped  to  know  their  own 
minds,  keeping  accounts  of  sales  and  stock,  taking  ad- 
dresses often  given  hurriedly  and  carelessly,  and  fined 
in  many  instances  if  they  are  written  down  incorrectly, 
and  all  this  for  salaries  ranging  from  $3  to  $8  a  week, 
and  obliged  to  dress  neatly  and  fairly  well,  and  to  pay  out 
of  it  for  one's  meals,  lodging,  washing,  clothing,  and  car- 
fare. 

"But  while  we  make  this  appeal  to  the  women  who  shop 
to  consider  the  feelings  and  comfort  of  those  who  sell, 
we  must  also  appeal  to  saleswomen  themselves  to  do 
their  duty  to  the  public  and  to  their  employers.  Our 
efforts  to  secure  for  all  the  women  and  girls  who  work 
in  retail  shops  in  this  city  the  same  conditions  which  exist 
in  the  shops  on  the  White  List  of  the  Consumers'  League 
are  hampered  by  the  fact  that  the  service  is  often  better 
in  the  shops  which  are  not  on  the  White  List.  The  sales- 
women in  the  shop  which  of  all  others  in  New  York  gives 
its  employees  the  greatest  number  of  privileges  have  been 
so  notoriously  rude  in  their  treatment  of  the  public  that 
ladies  have  given  that  reason  for  not  patronizing  it,  and 
thus  a  very  strong  moral  as  well  as  business  argument 
can  be  made  in  favor  of  fines  and  severity  of  discipline. 
If  punctuality,  fidelity,  and  conscientious  discharge  of 
their  duties  can  be  secured  only  by  punishment,  then 
punishment  should  be  resorted  to  until  the  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  saleswomen  is  so  improved  that  they  will 
respond  to  kindness. 

''The  Governing  Board  desires  to  call  the  attention  of 


350  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

members  of  the  League  to  the  paper  by  Dr.  Mary  Putnam 
Jacobi,  read  at  the  last  annual  meeting  of  the  League, 
which  was  sent  to  all  members  in  November.  Its  sub- 
ject is  ^The  Property  Rights  of  Employees/  and  it  con- 
tains a  statement  of  the  relation  of  employees  to  employers^ 
and  to  the  business  which  they  carry  on  in  common, 
which  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  since  it  is  the  true 
one,  and  yet  is  far  from  being  as  yet  widely  recognized. 
The  Board,  therefore,  makes  no  apology  for  quoting  at 
length  from  the  paper : 

^'  As  every  one  knows,  industrial  operations  for  the  crea- 
tion of  wealth  and  the  production  of  exchangeable  values 
were  originally  carried  on  by  slaves.  What  a  man  needed 
for  his  own  use  he  first  contrived  to  make.  Then,  when 
the  chances  of  war  threw  prisoners  into  his  hands,  especially 
women,  whose  time  and  strength  ceased  to  be  their  own, 
these  could  be  utilized  by  the  man  who  owned  them  and 
who  enriched  himself  at  small  expense  by  their  labor. 
Under  this  system  there  were  but  two  factors  in  industry, 
the  owners  and  the  owned.  Gradually  this  one  pair  of 
factors  became  converted  into  two  other  pairs,  which  are 
as  essentially  distinct  from  each  other  as  both  are  from 
the  original  couple,  the  owner  and  the  slave.  These  two 
modern  pairs  are,  on  the  one  hand,  the  master  and  the  ser- 
vant ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  employer  and  the  employed. 
These  two  couples  are  radically  distinct  from  each  other 
for  several  profound  reasons.  Yet  in  the  average  current 
thought,  they  are  not  infrequently  confounded.  Thus, 
the  other  day  I  heard  a  lady  remark,  apropos  of  the  motor- 
men  engaged  in   the  Brooklyn  strike:      'It  would   be 


THE  CONSUMERS'   LEAGUE  351 

as  absurd  to  allow  the  men  to  dictate  what  the  manage- 
ment shall  do  as  for  me  to  allow  my  servants  to  tell  me 
how  to  run  my  house.' 

^'  This  remark  embodies  the  stubborn  conviction  still 
naively  entertained  by  thousands  of  people  that  the  workers 
in  any  industrial  enterprise  are  and  must  always  be  the 
servants  of  those  who  conduct  this  enterprise.  This  as- 
sumption is  naive  and  unhistorical ;  but  in  it  is  contained 
the  gist  of  much  that  is  fallacious  in  theory  and  singularly 
harsh  and  unjust  in  practice.  The  fallacy  is  in  placing  a 
household  in  the  same  category  as  an  industrial  enterprise. 
The  function  of  the  industrial  business  is  the  creation  of 
wealth;  the  function  of  the  household  is  the  fulfilment 
of  personal  satisfactions,  the  creation,  if  possible,  of  happi- 
ness. The  business  makes  money ;  the  household  spends 
it.  Labor  in  a  household  is  personal  service ;  work  in  a 
business  is  industrial  investment.  Recompense  for  the 
first  is  a  fixed  stipend  calculated  upon  the  income  of  the 
person  benefited  and  served ;  recompense  for  the  second 
consists  in  a  share  in  the  profits  which  the  work  secures, 
and  is  therefore  not  fixed,  and  should  not  be,  but  varies 
with  the  success  of  the  business.  .  .  . 

"It  is  not  a  sentimental,  but  an  economic  classification, 
it  is  that  of  the  census,  which  ranks  in  one  class  the  pro- 
fessions and  the  domestic  servants ;  physicians,  lawyers, 
clergymen,  architects,  soldiers,  teachers,  with  manicures, 
nurses,  coachmen,  gardeners,  cooks.  The  common  bond 
of  union  between  the  different  members  of  this  class  which 
seems  so  heterogeneous  is  the  fact  that  the  work  in  each 
case  is  directed  toward  the  personal  welfare  of  some  in- 


352  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

dividual  who  is  relatively  helpless  and  often  unable  to 
test  or  estimate  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  service ;  that  is, 
to  know  whether  it  is  well  done  or  not,  or,  at  all  events, 
how  it  should  be  done ;  and,  further,  that  the  pecuniary 
reward  of  such  work  can  rarely  be  much  more  than  the 
living  expenses  of  the  workers,  and  cannot,  unless  invested 
in  strictly  industrial  enterprises,  procure  wealth.  Hence, 
as  a  substitute  for  wealth,  the  special  rewards  of  personal 
service  are  personal  affection,  appreciation  of  fidelity, 
trust,  social  honor.  .  .  . 

"Every  detail  of  this  situation  is  in  contrast  with 
that  of  the  industrial  enterprise.  Almost  at  the  outset 
of  the  growth  of  this,  the  element  of  personal  contact  dis- 
appears, and  at  the  maximum  of  expansion,  in  huge  con- 
glomerations of  factory  labor,  personalities  themselves 
are  swamped.  The  servant,  whether  domestic  or  pro- 
fessional, contributes  nothing  to  the  income  of  the  person 
he  serves  and  out  of  which  he  is  paid.  The  employee  is 
constantly  helping  to  create  the  fund  which  is  partly  re- 
turned to  him  in  wages.  On  this  account  he  cannot  prop- 
erly be  said  to  be  employed  by  a  master.  He  follows 
a  leader  in  carrying  on  an  enterprise  for  their  common, 
definite,  pecuniary  benefit. 

"  The  wage  fund  doctrine  is,  I  need  hardly  say,  a  very 
famous  theory  which  has  had  and  has  extremely  practical 
and  far-reaching  consequences.  In  this  theory,  which  is 
now  rapidly  beginning  to  be  discredited,  industrial  wages 
are  paid  out  of  capital,  just  as  domestic  wages  are  paid 
out  of  income.  The  capitahst  does  not  purchase  a  labor 
product,  but  the  time  of  a  laborer,  which  has  often  been 
equivalent  to  the  purchase  of  the  laborer. 


THE  CONSUMERS'   LEAGUE  353 

"  But  there  is  another  theory,  and  this  seems  to  me  the 
true  one,  namely,  that  industrial  wages  are  not  paid  from 
the  capital  invested  in  the  work,  but  from  the  product  or 
profits  of  the  work.  The  payment  of  wages  is  only  a  form 
more  or  less  convenient  for  distributing  a  share  of  the 
product  to  those  who  have  helped  in  the  production.  On 
the  theory  that  the  capitalist  personally  pays  the  wages 
out  of  his  own  property,  it  is  conceivable  that  he  should 
try  to  keep  these  wages  as  near  the  limit  of  subsistence 
as  possible,  and  try  to  regulate  them  exclusively  by  the 
f aciUty  of  procuring  laborers ;  in  common  parlance,  by  the 
demand  of  the  labor  market.  The  laborer's  subsistence 
is  then  reckoned  in  the  cost  qf  production,  and  should  be 
regulated  on  the  same  principle  as  other  items  of  cost; 
that  is  to  say,  kept  down  as  much  as  possible  in  the  in- 
terest of  thrift  and  economy,  and  so  as  to  leave  the  profits 
as  large  as  possible  for  the  single  owner  or  group  of  owners 
of  the  concern.  On  the  other  theory,  that  all  the  workers 
in  a  business  are  creating  the  wealth  out  of  which  their 
subsistence  is  to  be  drawn,  the  whole  principle  of  owner- 
ship is  shifted.  While  the  possession  of  the  inherited  or 
acquired  capital  and  of  the  brain  power  which  initiated 
the  business  confers  a  primary  ownership,  a  first  lien  on 
the  product,  it  does  not  justify  the  permanence  of  absolute 
control,  because  it  does  not  exclusively  suffice  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  business.  This  necessitates  the  co- 
operation of  many  other  people,  often  hundreds  or  even 
thousands,  each  of  whom,  with  his  own  hands  and  brains 
and  vital  forces,  has  created  a  certain  share  of  the  product, 
and  is  therefore  to  that  extent  its  owner.    The  right  of 

2a 


354  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

private  property  means  nothing  else  than  the  right  to  own 
the  product  of  one's  own  labor.  Yet  the  right  of  private 
property  was  once  invoked  as  a  justification  for  ownership 
in  the  slave;  and  only  within  this  generation  has  this 
monstrous  right  been  finally  and  forever  banished  from 
recognition  among  civilized  nations.  Today  we  may  go 
a  step  beyond  the  mental  conquest  of  thirty  years  ago  and 
paraphrase  the  pungent  words  of  Emerson : 

'Pay  the  profits  to  the  owner, 

And  fill  up  the  bag  to  the  brim. 
Who  is  the  owner?    Who  works  is  the  owner, 
And  always  was.     Pay  him! ' 

"A  man  may  be  said  to  own  a  diamond  absolutely.  It  is 
a  material  entity,  whose  properties  are  fixed  and  depend 
upon  nothing  external,  not  even  on  the  activities,  physical 
or  mental,  of  its  owner.  An  industrial  enterprise  is  quite 
other  than  this.  It  is  a  complex  spiritual  organism,  whose 
constituent  parts  are  the  vital  actions  of  human  beings. 
The  relations  to  consider  are  primarily  those  of  these, 
human  beings  to  the  business  or  to  the  product  which  is 
the  tangible  proof  of  their  different  activities.  The  re- 
lations of  the  larger  group  which  obeys  to  the  smaller 
group,  or  individual,  who  directs,  are  of  secondary  im- 
portance. Yet  these  relations,  or,  as  they  are  commonly 
called,  the  relations  of  the  employer  to  the  employed,  or 
of  the  master  to  the  hands,  are  usually  put  forward  as  not 
only  of  prime,  but  even  of  exclusive  importance. 

"It  is  not  necessary  for  our  present  purpose  to  do  any- 
thing further  than  enunciate  this  principle  of  partial 
ownership  in  the  product  as  the  real  recompense  for  all  in- 
dustrial labor.  .  .  . 


THE  CONSUMERS^  LEAGUE  355 

"  How  the  ownership  may  be  recognized  and  expressed 
is  a  second  question.  The  first  question  to  be  settled 
is  the  fact  of  the  ownership,  and  at  this  moment  I  can 
hardly  do  more  than  suggest  this  fact. 

"It  is  possible  that  at  a  given  moment  the  adoption  of 
the  principle  of  diffused  ownership  among  the  employees 
of  an  establishment  might  not  increase  the  amount  of 
mon'ey  they  were  already  receiving.  Nevertheless,  it 
would  radically  change  their  position.  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  stigmatize  any  claims  of  workers  as  impertinent. 
They  might  be  unreasonable;  it  might  be  necessary  to 
resist  them  for  the  sake  of  the  common  welfare.  But  with 
the  disappearance  of  the  notion  that  the  business  was 
absolutely  owned  by  one  man,  and  that  every  one  else 
was  simply  employed  by  him  at  his  good  will,  would  dis- 
appear the  other  notion  that  every  arrangement  involving 
the  rights,  the  comforts,  or  even  the  pleasure  of  the 
workers  must  be  left  absolutely  to  the  control  of  a  master. 
We  should  hear  no  more  of  such  phrases  :  '  I  must  manage 
my  own  business  in  my  own  way.'  ^I  will  not  be  dic- 
tated to  by  my  employees,'  etc.  The  transformation  I 
have  supposed  applied  to  business  organizations  is  pre- 
cisely what  has  already  been  effected  on  a  large  scale  in 
the  pohtical  organization.  Little  more  than  two  centuries 
have  elapsed  since  a  king  could  declare  and  be  believed, 
'L'6tat,  c'est  moi.'  No  one  questions  today  that  the 
state  consists  not  of  the  king,  but  of  the  people.  We 
should  try  as  fast  as  possible  to  bring  about  the  regime 
where  every  business  and  industrial  organism  will  also  be 
seen  to  consist  not  of  a  single  man,  but  of  all  the  people, 


356  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

men  and  women,  in  it,  each  of  whom  has  the  right  to  speak, 
the  minimum  right  of  a  single  vote,  upon  such  topics  as 
they  have  demonstrated  a  capacity  to  discuss.  .  .  /' 

During  her  presidency  of  the  Consumers'  League, 
which,  notwithstanding  her  intended  early  retirement, 
continued  until  1896,  the  meetings  of  its  Governing  Board 
were  held  at  Mrs.  LowelFs  residence  in  New  York,  ^nd 
at  the  time  of  her  death  she  was  one  of  the  Honorary  Vice- 
Presidents. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Work  for  the  Emancipation  of  Labor 

Mrs.  Lowell  left  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  not- 
withstanding the  earnest  wishes  of  the  members  of  the 
Board  and  of  her  family  and  friends  that  she  should  re- 
main a  member,  for  reasons  best  told  in  two  of  her  letters, 
of  which  one  was  addressed  to  Mrs.  Henry  S.  Russell, 
daughter  of  John  M.  Forbes  of  Boston,  a  lifelong  friend, 
and  the  other  to  her  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Robert  Gould 
Shaw. 

120  East  30th  Street,  April  7,  1889. 
Dearest  Mollie  : 

Of  course  your  remarks  about  my  plans  for  future  work 
interested  me,  and  I  was  much  pleased  that  you  should 
care. 

But,  to  begin  with,  I  never  meant  to  have  the  matter 
talked  about.  I  have  not  resigned  from  the  State  Board 
yet,  and  shall  not,  until  the  end  of  my  term,  a  couple  of 
months  hence,  I  beUeve.  Then  what  I  want  to  do  is, 
with  others,  to  try  to  prevent  strikes,  by  various  means 
already  successfully  tried  elsewhere,  and  here  ignored 
by  both  employers  and  unions.  I  don't  think  that  the 
strong  intelligence  of  business  men  has  made  such  a  success 
of  their  relations  with  their  work  people  (either  for  them- 

357 


358  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

selves  or  the  work  people)  that  there  is  no  room  for  other 
people  to  come  in,  and  suggest  new  things.  The  experience 
of  the  business  men  in  their  own  ways  may  have  con- 
vinced them  that  some  change  is  desirable.  .  .  . 

The  main  point,  to  my  mind,  however,  is  that  there  ought 
to  be  a  different  feehng  on  the  whole  subject  of  ^^  Labor  and 
Capital."  It  is  wrong  and  stupid  that  men  who  have 
to  work  together  and  are  absolutely  dependent  on  each 
other,  should  hate  each  other,  as  employers  seem  to  hate 
their  men,  and  men  their  employers  now-a-days,  and  I 
believe  that  something  can  be  done,  and  a  great  deal,  to 
change  that  feeling,  just  as  Mr.  Maurice  and  Mr.  Kingsley 
and  Mr.  Hughes  did  so  much  in  England  forty  years 
ago. 

At  any  rate,  the  interests  of  the  working  people  are  of 
paramount  importance,  simply  because  they  are  the  ma- 
jority of  the  whole  people,  and  the  indifference  and  ignor- 
ance and  harshness  felt  and  expressed  against  them  by 
so  many  good  people  is  simply  awful  to  me  and  I  must 
try  to  help  them,  if  I  can,  and  leave  the  broken  down 
paupers  to  others.  Read  what  Mr.  Emerson  says  about 
our  relations  toward  the  working  people  in  ^^Man  the 
Reformer."  .  .  . 

120  East  30th  St.,  May  19,  '89. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

.  .  .  Nellie  says  you  think  I  ought  to  continue  on  the  Board, 
but  I  think  that  there  is  far  more  important  work  to  be 
done  for  working  people.  Five  hundred  thousand  wage 
earners  in  this  city,  200,000  of  them  women  and  75,000 
of  those  working  under  dreadful  conditions  or  for  starva- 
tion wages.  That  is  more  vital  than  the  25,000  depend- 
ents, counting  the  children.  If  the  working  people  had 
all  they  ought  to  have,  we  should  not  have  the  paupers 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR     359 

and  criminals.  It  is  better  to  save  them  before  they  go 
under,  than  to  spend  your  life  fishing  them  out  when 
they're  half  drowned  and  taking  care  of  them  afterwards  ! 
Exactly  what  I  can  do,  I  do  not  know,  but  I  want  the 
time  to  try,  and  as  my  term  is  up  now,  I  had  to  seize  the 
opportunity  to  leave  the  Board.     There  !  .  .  . 


While  still  a  member  of  the  State  Board,  Mrs.  Lowell 
began  to  study  questions  conmionly  called  those  of  labor 
and  capital,  and  letters  addressed  to  her,  which  she  pre- 
served, showed  that  she  obtained  information  at  first 
hand  by  active  correspondence,  in  this  country  and  abroad, 
with  writers  on  economic  subjects,  with  master  builders 
and  other  large  employers  of  labor,  and  with  leaders  of 
organized  labor.  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt  and  Colonel 
George  E.  Waring  ^  wrote  freely  to  her,  and  evidently 
relied  upon  her  judgment.  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins  has 
said  that  some  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  papers  on  industrial 
conciliation  which  she  sent  to  Colonel  Waring  during 
a  labor  crisis  at  the  beginning  of  his  services  as  Com- 
missioner of  Street  Cleaning  led  him  to  form  a  permanent 
Board. of  Conciliation  which  helped  him  to  work  out  suc- 
cessfully many  of  the  problems  of  his  department.  Some 
exceedingly  interesting  letters  from  Colonel  Waring, 
endorsed  in  Mrs.  LowelFs  own  handwriting  "Not  for  pub- 
lication," were  laid  aside  with  regret. 

The  following  strong  and  helpful  letter  of  Mr.  Hewitt's 

1  George  E.  Waring,  Jr.,  1833-1898.  Colonel  in  Civil  War.  Sani- 
tary Engineer.  Commissioner  of  Street  Cleaning,  New  York  City, 
1894-1896. 


360  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

is  not  only  interesting  reading,  but  has  supplied  the  title 
for  this  chapter ; 

New  York,  June  5,  1885. 
Dear  Mrs.  Lowell: 

I  am  much  obliged  to  you  for  your  pleasant  note  of  the 
4th  instant .  The  speech  on  the  '  ^  Emancipation  of  Labor ' ' 
has  already  had  a  wide  circulation  among  the  trades  union 
people.  I  do  not  know  that  any  copy  of  it  ever  reached 
Mr.  PhiUips,  but  if  I  have  fifty  copies  to  spare  I  will  send 
them  to  him  in  the  course  of  a  day  or  two.  I  have  great 
pleasure  in  sending  to  you  two  copies  of  the  '^Century  of 
Mining^'  and  a  dozen  copies  of  the  "Emancipation  of 
Labor.'' 

I  do  not  think  that  this  kind  of  work  ever  receives  from 
the  parties  most  interested  the  recognition  which  it  ought 
to  have ;  certainly  it  ought  never  to  be  done  in  the  hope 
of  receiving  any  such  recognition.  My  experience  is 
that  the  demagogue  who  deliberately  deceives  the  working- 
men  gets  their  support,  while  those  who  tell  them  the  truth 
and  labor  assiduously  to  discover  it,  are  usually  regarded  as 
enemies.  In  my  own  case  the  only  candidate  who  has  of 
late  years  been  run  against  me  for  Congress  has  been  a 
nominee  of  the  labor  organizations.  Of  course  he  never 
got  many  votes,  but  it  was  evidence  of  the  total  ignorance 
of  these  organizations  on  the  subject  which  most  concerned 
them,  and  to  which  I  had  given  the  labor  of  my  life. 
Nevertheless  the  work  must  be  patiently  and  conscien- 
tiously done,  and  I  see  very  clearly  in  the  changes  which 
are  going  on  throughout  the  world  steady  progress  toward 
the  knowledge  of  sound  principles  and  their  application 
to  the  great  business  of  life.  Mankind  is  better  than  it 
ever  has  been,  and  the  fruits  of  industry  are  more  justly 
distributed  than  in  any  previous  period  of  the  world. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    361 

This  ought  to  encourage  us  to  continue  our  work,  for  '4t 
is  not  in  vain." 

Yours  sincerely, 

Abram  S.  Hewitt. 

The  New  York  Times  of  December  2,  1892,  pubUshed 
the  following  letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  the  extracts 
to  which  it  referred,  and  in  an  editorial  observed,  that 
she  was  correct  in  thinking  that  they  have  a  particular 
interest  at  the  present  time : 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  New  York  Times: 

I  am  very  glad  that  you  have  called  the  attention  of  the 
directors  of  the  railroads  to  their  responsibility  for  the 
prevention  of  strikes  among  railroad  employees  next  year. 

I  desire  to  refer  you  and  your  readers  to  an  article 
published  in  Scribner^s  Magazine  in  1889  by  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  then  President  of  the  Union  Pacific  Rail- 
way Company,  under  the  title,  ^'The  Prevention  of  Rail- 
road Strikes,"  and  to  ask  you  to  publish  the  inclosed 
extracts  from  that  article. 

The  only  solution  of  the  labor  question  for  railroads 
as  well  as  for  all  other  branches  of  industry,  lies  in  the 
recognition  that  there  are  two  parties  interested,  and  that 
each  party  has  a  right  to  be  heard  on  all  questions  which 
concern  both. 

The  fact  that  it  is  an  Adams  who  again  speaks  for 
justice  and  the  representative  system  cannot  fail  to  be  of 
interest  to  those  who  care  to  see  the  great  qualities  of  a 
great  family  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

The  winter  of  1893-1894  was  one  of  extraordinary 
severity  in  the  City  of  New  York.     Industrial  conditions 


362  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

were  then  depressed  and  the  unfortunate  combination 
caused  much  suffering  and  distress  among  working  people. 
Organized  efforts  for  their  relief  were  promptly  begun, 
Mrs.  Lowell,  as  usual,  being  one  of  the  leaders.  Several 
papers  from  her  pen,  on  the  methods  and  satisfactory- 
results  of  this  emergency  relief  work,  were  pubUshed  at 
the  time  and  are  noted  in  the  index ;  limitation  of  space 
permits  the  admission  of  only  one  of  them,  ^'Poverty  and 
its  ReHef,  the  Methods  Possible  in  the  City  of  New  York,'' 
which  is  included  in  the  chapter  on  the  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society. 

Among  Mrs.  Lowell's  associates  in  this  work  was  Miss 
Lillian  D.  Wald,  who,  in  a  memorial  address,  made  the 
following  mention  of  her  manner  and  methods  in  the 
emergency : 

''In  the  early  summer  of  1893  the  lower  East  Side  gave 
evidence  of  the  terrible  winter  which  was  to  follow.  .  .  . 
It  was  not  easy  to  pass  the  summer  and  see  actual  want  of 
food  among  people,  who  in  almost  every  instance  appeared 
to  be  wholly  respectable ;  to  see  the  unemployed  organize 
almost  spontaneously  and  storm  an  empty  hall  in  their 
desire  to  get  in  for  the  purpose  of  conferring  about  their 
need,  because  they  had  no  money  to  pay  for  a  meeting 
place;  to  see  the  battle  between  the  people  who  wished 
to  talk  over  their  matters  which  they  were  not  allowed 
to  do  on  the  street,  and  the  police  who  naturally  wished 
to  guard  property.  All  New  York  seemed  to  be  away 
during  the  summer,  and  the  little  group  at  the  College 
Settlement,  where  I  was  then  in  residence,  was  anxious 
and  bewildered,  as  were  the  other  people  of  the  neigh- 
borhood.    With  the  autumn  came  pubUc  recognition  of 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    363 

the  hardships  upon  the  working  people,  and  the  desire  and 
abihty  to  help  them  personified  in  Mrs.  Lowell. 

'^I  must  be  pardoned  for  injecting  a  memory  of  my  first 
acquaintance  and  personal  experience  with  her  at  that  time. 
She  seemed  to  realize  the  condition  of  mind  of  young  and 
untried  people  in  an  experience  so  bitter  as  the  season  of 
1893  to  1894  was  to  them.  Inexperienced  as  I  was,  and  un- 
accustomed to  thinking  of  troubles  so  grave  and  great,  she 
treated  me  like  a  comrade,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  gigantic 
work  entailed  upon  her  as  administratrix  of  much  of  the 
relief  for  the  unemployed,  she  found  time  to  write  many 
notes  asking  my  counsel,  climbing  the  five  flights  of  stairs 
to  the  tenement  where  I  was  at  that  time  living,  inviting 
me  to  publish  letters  with  her  concerning  the  situation, 
treating  me  as  a  comrade  in  the  responsibility  and  the  ser- 
vice of  the  winter.  I  think  because  she  was  so  simple  about 
it,  one  took  it  in  the  same  way  and  talked  freely  without 
self -consciousness,  or  perhaps  it  was  her  deeply  tbought- 
out  plan  to  encourage  the  beginner  by  dignifying  her. 

'^The  special  work  for  the  unemployed,  called  the  East 
Side  Relief  Work,  was  organized  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  and 
was  composed  of  representatives  from  churches,  settle- 
ments, philanthropic  societies  and  individuals.  Con- 
sideration of  the  work  to  be  done  was  started  the  latter 
part  of  October,  1893.  ...  Of  course  there  were  able 
and  devoted  men  and  women  working  with  Mrs.  Lowell, 
but  she  was  the  animating  spirit  and  all  of  those  associated 
with  her  at  the  time  did,  I  am  sure,  carry  a  life-long  mem- 
ory of  her  patience,  intelligence  and  ability.  She  modestly 
said:  ^I  believe  that  through  this  relief  as  little  moral 
harm  as  was  possible  has  come  to  those  whose  physical 
needs  have  been  supplied.'  The  payment  for  all  of  the 
work  was  in  money,  Mrs.  Lowell  believing  that  it  would 
go  back  into  the  natural  channels  of  trade  in  the  poor 


364  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

neighborhoods  in  which  the  people  lived,  thus  doing 
double  good.  .  .  .  Perhaps  Mrs.  Lowell's  lasting  in- 
fluence over  those  fortunate  enough  to  be  with  her  was 
due  to  the  conviction  that  all  of  her  social  help  was  con- 
sidered by  her  head  as  well  as  by  her  sympathy  —  both 
equally  alert  to  respond  to  every  human  call.  ..." 

Some  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  letters  written  to  her  sister-in- 
law  at  this  time  of  industrial  distress  refer  to  this  emer- 
gency, and  show  the  sympathetic  and  humorous  touch 
which  illumined  even  her  most  trying  work. 

120  East  30th  Street,  Nov.  26,  1893. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

You  will  be  interested  in  the  enclosed.  It  has  absorbed 
most  of  my  time  for  the  past  two  weeks.  We  have  had 
Committee  meetings  at  the  College  Settlement  about  four 
times  a  week,  to  make  our  plans,  and  now  they  are  just 
about  being  consummated  and  we  hope  to  have  both  kinds 
of  work  going  by  Wednesday.  We  shall  hire  an  idle  shop, 
163  Attorney  Street,  up  five  flights  in  a  rear  building,  and 
the  idle  owner  to  act  as  foreman,  and  we  shall  put  our  poor 
^^ Hebrew  Jews"  at  work  to  clothe  the  poor  Negroes  of  the 
Sea  Islands.  We  have  engaged  a  good  woman  to  be  our 
Superintendent  and  look  after  the  women  and  also  the 
peace  and  comfort  of  the  men.  Besides  this,  we  have  a 
street  sweeping  Superintendent  who  has  been  for  years 
with  the  best  private  cleaner  in  this  City  and  we  expect 
to  make  the  streets  ''as  clean  as  von  pin."  It  is  interest- 
ing meeting  the  Committee  people,  for  they  are  all  good 
workers,  and  give  their  lives  to  trying  to  help,  so  that  they 
know  a  good  deal  more  than  the  usual  well-to-do  folks  who 
serve  on  Committees.  Mr.  Elsing  and  Mr.  Devins  have 
the  churches  right  down  among  the  tenement  houses,  and 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    365 

the  latter  told  me  the  other  day  that  he  was  a  poor  boy  in 
this  city,  so  he  knows  how  to  feel  for  them.  Dr.  Jane  Rob- 
bins  has  lived  two  years  in  a  tenement  house  among  the 
Italians  in  Mulberry  Street,  and  she  says  she  loves  them. 
What  we  ought  to  have  are  settlements  in  every 
street,  to  help  civilize  and  Hft  the  people.  There  is  one 
interesting  man  hving  down  in  Forsyth  Street,  Charles  B. 
Stover  ^  —  educated  for  a  Lutheran  minister,  but  deciding 
not  to  take  orders,  he  devotes  himself  to  pubUc  work. 
He  is  a  school  trustee  and  gives  lots  of  time  to  that,  and, 
besides,  he  keeps  himself  so  busy  that  he  does  not  go  to  bed 
but  two  or  three  times  a  week !  He  sleeps  in  a  chair  the 
other  nights. 

Dec.  17,  1893. 

Dearest  Annie: 

My  excuse  for  my  silence  is  to  be  found  in  the  enclosed 
papers,  for  I  have  been  spending  the  last  three  weeks  in 
trying  to  get  this  plan  into  working  order.  It  has  been 
a  very  interesting  experience  and  I  have  learned  a  great 
deal.  We  have  had  meetings  of  the  Committees  to  get 
the  thing  started,  and  now  I  am  Chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee that  runs  the  shop  and  also  a  member  of  the  Ex- 
ecutive Committee  that  runs  the  whole  thing,  so  I  have 
still  to  be  down  town  three  times  a  week  nearly  all  day. 
We  have  a  shop  meeting  at  12,  and  then  I  go  to  a  Charity 
Eating  House  to  take  lunch,  and  to  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee at  2 :  30.  Our  shop  is  full  of  poor,  thin  Jews,  who 
have  been  months  without  work  and  many  of  whom  can- 
not speak  Enghsh,  and  our  street  sweeping  company  is 
composed  of  all  nationaUties.  We  had  ninety  men  on 
last  week  and  we  expect  to  have  hundreds  before  the  end. 

^  Commissioner  of  Public  Parks,  in  Mayor  Gaynor's  Administration 
1910. 


366  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

120  E.  30th  St.,  March,  1894. 
Dearest  Annie  : 

I  am  feeling  quite  elated,  having  finished  compiling 
what  I  hope  will  prove  a  new  book  to  be  published  by 
the  Putnams.^  There  is  almost  nothing  of  mine  except  the 
few  words  needed  to  string  together  quotations  from  other 
people,  but  it  has  taken  me  some  time.  It  is  an  account  of 
various  instances  of  conciliation,  beginning  with  extracts 
from  some  English  authors  on  English  experience  and 
leading  up  to  our  own  New  York,  Chicago  and  Boston 
builders  and  bricklayers,  and  including  an  account  of  some 
of  Mr.  Weiler's  plans.  It  is  very  interesting  to  me,  and 
very  encouraging,  as  it  is  a  record  of  real  justice  and  in- 
telligence triumphing  over  selfish  brutal  passion.  I  long 
to  see  it  published,  as  few  people  know  anything  of  these 
things  and  they  ought  to  be  held  up  as  examples  to  all 
employers  and  workmen. 

Mr.  Charles  S.  Fair  child  has  supplied  the  following  in- 
vitation from  Mrs.  Lowell  to  attend  a  meeting  with  the 
object  of  arranging  a  settlement  of  the  tailors^  strike. 

120  East  30th  Street,  New  York,  Sept.  3,  1894. 

My  dear  Mr.  Fairchild  : 

It  may  have  escaped  your  notice  that  the  garment- 
makers  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  are  asking  for  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours,  and  have  determined  to  strike  if 
they  are  refused. 

That  they  should  be  forced  to  strike  would  be  a  great 
misfortune,  but  a  still  greater  misfortune  to  the  city  would 

1  This  book  was  put  through  the  press  during  Mrs.  Lowell's  absence 
in  Europe  by  her  friend,  Mrs.  Nicoll  Floyd. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    367 

be  to  have  them  continue  to  work  at  the  present  rates. 
Good  workmen  have  been  earning  six  dollars  a  week 
by  fifteen  hours  work  a  day,  which  means  that  they  are 
overworked  and  that  they  and  their  famihes  are  underfed 
and  their  health  being  undermined. 

The  situation  is  one  which  no  power  except  the  workers 
themselves  can  improve;  if  three-fourths  of  the  con- 
tractors desired  to  advance  wages  they  could  not  do  it 
so  long  as  the  workers  accept  the  low  wages,  and  charity 
would  only  make  matters  worse  by  encouraging  the  people 
to  think  that  they  could  continue  to  work  for  wages  in- 
sufficient to  sustain  life  decently.  The  outlook  has  been 
very  dark,  because  there  seemed  no  remedy,  as  one  could 
not  hope  that  the  workers,  after  all  the  sufferings  and 
privations  of  the  past  year,  would  dare  to  take  any  risk. 
They  have,  however,  had  the  courage  to  do  so,  and  now 
the  duty  of  all  public  spirited  men  and  women  is  to 
support  them  in  their  demands  and  to  render  a  strike 
unnecessary,  or,  at  least,  make  it  as  short  as  possible. 

It  is  stated  in  the  Times  of  Sunday  that  in  Brooklyn 
the  contractors  have  asked  for  a  conference  with  the 
workmen,  while  in  New  York,  the  Contractors'  Protec- 
tive Union  is  to  hold  a  meeting  on  Tuesday  evening, 
at  200  East  Broadway,  to  arrange  plans  to  protect  their 
interests. 

The  gentlemen  and  ladies  named  in  the  enclosed  list 
are  invited  by  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins,  Head- worker  of  the 
College  Settlement,  and  me  to  meet  us  at  95  Rivington 
Street,  at  6  p.m.,  on  Tuesday,  the  4th  inst.,  where  we  can 
talk  over  the  situation  and,  afterwards,  if  so  decided, 
attend  the  meeting  of  the  Contractors'  Protective  Union, 
for  the  purpose  of  requesting  them  to  confer  with  their 
workmen  and  make  a  settlement  without  forcing  a  strike. 

I  hope  very  earnestly  that  you  will  be  able  to  be  present. 


368  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Sept.  9,  '94. 
Deakest  Annie  : 

I  don't  seem  to  have  much  to  tell  that  will  be  interesting, 
though  I  have  had  a  very  interesting  week.  The  poor 
sweated  tailors  struck  last  Monday,  asking  for  ten  hours' 
work  a  day  and  weekly  pay,  instead  of  fifteen  hours' 
and  piece  work,  and  everything  went  beautifully  for  the 
sweaters  and  the  wholesale  manufacturers  and  the 
newspapers  were  all  agreed  that  the  men  were  quite  right 
and  that  the  change  must  be  made.  Now,  however,  the 
men  seem  to  have  got  puffed  up  by  too  much  success,  and 
they  are  asking  unreasonable  things  and  there  is  to  be 
hard  work  in  showing  them  that  it  was  the  righteousness 
of  their  cause  and  not  their  strength  that  won  approval. 

I  have  been  running  round,  seeing  various  people  con- 
nected with  the  trade  and  having  a  very  good  time,  but 
now  there  will  be  harder  work.  I  was  in  it,  because  of 
my  interest  in  the  tailors,  and  because  we  had  a  meeting 
at  the  College  Settlement  to  help  them  and  the  papers 
took  it  up,  and  we  thought  it  was  all  lovely,  when  behold  ! 
the  poor  things  do  this  ! 

Speaking  after  Mrs.  Lowell's  death  of  this  strike,  one  of 
her  associates  in  this  work,  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins,  said : 

''I  have  known  Mrs.  Lowell  since  the  winter  of  the  un- 
employed, 1893-1894.  Living  through  that  winter  was 
a  tremendous  experience,  so  that  I  had  special  chance  to 
know  her  great  mind  and  her  splendid  heart.  It  was  a 
wonderful  revelation  of  the  possibilities  of  womanhood. 

"During  a  tailors'  strike  in  the  fall  of  1894,  I  went 
with  Mrs.  Lowell  to  confer  with  an  executive  committee 
representing  the  large  clothing  houses  on  lower  Broadway. 
The  presiding  officer  was  markedly  discourteous,   but 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    369 

Mrs.  Lowell  entirely  ignored  his  rudeness  and  quietly  pre- 
sented the  cause  of  the  poor  tailor.  She  never  seemed 
to  have  any  time  to  think  about  herself.  What  she  said 
was  so  convincing  that  before  we  left  the  meeting  the 
executive  committee  had  given  us  a  message  to  take  back 
to  the  strikers.  We  were  to  tell  them  to  stand  together 
firmly  for  a  shorter  work-day  and  for  a  living  wage.  I 
learned  to  depend  upon  Mrs.  Lowell's  judgment  in  all 
labor  questions.  In  this  particular  strike  I  held  back  at 
first,  because  I  knew  so  little  of  the  pros  and  cons  of  the 
struggle;  but  she  said  wisely  that  all  we  really  needed 
to  know  was  that  the  poor  tailors  were  making  a  brave 
fight,  and  that  we  must  help  them.  She  saw  the  reporters 
of  all  the  influential  papers,  and  she  inspired  several  fine 
editorials.  The  tailors  won  their  poor  little  struggle  for 
better  conditions.'' 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  always  glad  of  an  opportunity  to 
bring  more  comfort  and  pleasure  into  the  lives  of  working 
people.  Not  long  before  her  death  she  addressed  a  letter 
to  the  president  of  an  important  mining  corporation,  with 
whom  she  was  not  acquainted,  in  which  she  said  that  in 
passing  through  the  miners'  village  she  had  noticed  with 
satisfaction  the  admirable  homes  erected  by  the  company 
for  the  miners'  famihes,  but  was  sorry  to  observe  that  so 
few  shade  trees  had  been  planted ;  and  suggested  that  not 
only  the  greater  comfort  of  the  residents  would  be  secured, 
but  also  the  general  appearance  of  the  village  improved 
by  more  liberal  plantations,  which  have  since  been  made. 

An  instance  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  championship  of  labor,  and 
of  her  readiness  in  debate,  occurred  at  a  session  of  the 
Twenty-fifth  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correc- 

2b 


370  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

tion,  which  convened  in  the  City  of  New  York  under  my 
chairmanship  in  May,  1898,  and  was  noticed  in  the  New 
York  Sun  of  May  21,  under  the  caption  ^^SpUt  on  Prison 
Labor."  Hon.  Carl  Schurz  had  presented  a  paper  on  the 
Spoils  System,  which,  with  the  subject  of  which  it  treated, 
was  open  to  discussion  in  the  Conference.  Mr.  Charlton 
T.  Lewis,  President  of  the  Prison  Association,  then  called 
the  attention  of  the  Conference  to  the  evil  effect  of  politics 
in  prisons,  and  emphasized  the  necessity  of  keeping  pris- 
oners, the  wards  of  the  State,  at  labor,  and  of  wisely  direct- 
ing their  work  to  make  it  both  productive  and  educational. 
He  complained  that  the  amendment  to  the  constitution 
of  New  York  State  relating  to  prison  labor  made  it  nec- 
essary that  these  considerations  should  be  disregarded  and 
left  the  laborers  free  only  to  make  something  to  be  used 
in  other  charitable,  reformatory,  or  penal  institutions  of 
the  State.    And  he  continued  : 

^^Why?  Because  there  are  half  a  dozen  men  who  call 
themselves  par  excellence  labor  men,  the  representatives 
of  labor  in  this  State,  and  who  prove  it  by  doing  no 
work,  but  live  by  hanging  around  legislatures  in  order  to 
lobby  measures  through  which  shall  enable  them  to  report 
something  like  success  to  the  workingmen  who  have  paid 
them  for  this  legislative  service.  These  men  went  to  the 
party  leaders,  and  said,  ^Unless  you  accept  this  amend- 
ment and  put  it  into  the  constitution,  your  party  will  get 
no  votes  from  the  labor  unions  in  this  State  at  the  next 
election.'  Under  that  pressure,  this  provision  was  put 
into  the  fundamental  law  of  the  State.  Do  I  complain  of 
the  knot  of  those  who  regard  themselves  as  entitled  to 
speak  for  the  laboring  interest  ?  '^ 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    371 

The  report  of  the  meetings  says  :  ''Before  Mr.  Lewis  had 
taken  his  seat,  Mrs.  Lowell,  who  had  gone  down  into  the 
audience  after  her  speech,  was  climbing  the  platform 
stairs  and  asking  for  a  chance  to  reply.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  the  general  engagement.  'It  seems  to  me,'  she 
said,  almost  before  she  had  gained  the  platform,  'that  if 
Mr.  Choate  erred  in  speaking  of  the  amendment  in  too 
favorable  terms,  Mr.  Lewis  errs  far  more  in  speaking  of  it 
in  too  condemnatory  terms.  I  beUeve  that  it  is  the  best 
labor  law  yet.  One  reason  why  it  isn't  working  as  well 
as  it  might  is  that  between  November,  1894,  when  it  was 
adopted,  and  January,  1896,  when  it  went  into  effect,  the 
time  was  used  by  the  prison  authorities  not  in  preparation 
for  the  new  arrangements,  but  in  trying  to  secure  a  repeal. 
Labor  has  been  found  for  a  large  proportion  of  the  prison- 
ers, as  Mr.  Lewis  admits.  I  can't  sit  here  and  hear  the 
labor  imions  attacked  for  defending  themselves  against 
the  unwise  and  cruel  competition  of  the  prisons.  The 
laboring  classes  are  the  people  —  all  the  people.  The  few 
people  that  don't  belong  to  the  laboring  classes  don't 
amount  to  anything.  (Laughter.)  Every  step  the  labor 
unions  took  was  spoiled  by  the  action  of  the  prison  author- 
ities. Finally  the  unions  had  the  power  to  stop  that  sort 
of  thing,  and  they  did  it.' " 

In  a  recent  life  of  Andrew  Jackson^  the  following  passage 
occurs :  "Jackson  was  in  accord  with  his  generation. 
He  had  a  clear  perception  that  the  toiling  millions  are  not 
a  class  in  the  community,  but  are  the  community.  He 
knew  and  felt  that  government  should  exist  only  for  the 
benefit  of  the  governed ;  that  the  strong  are  strong  only 
that  they  may  aid  the  weak ;  that  the  rich  are  rightfully 
rich  that  they  may  so  combine  and  so  direct  the  labors  of 
the  poor  as  to  make  labor  more  profitable  to  the  laborers." 

^  "The  True  Andrew  Jackson,"  by  Cyrus  Townsend  Brady,  p.  287. 


372  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

However  opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  position  Mrs. 
Lowell  then  took,  she  evidently  by  her  words  and  actions, 
and  also  by  the  sentiments  expressed  in  her  papers  on 
labor  questions,  always  held  exactly  to  Jackson^s  opinions, 
and  no  one  can  reasonably  question  her  absolute  sincerity. 

Paper  Read  at  the  First  Public  Meeting  of  the 
Working  Women's  Society^ 

As  you  have  asked  me  to  speak  to  you  tonight,  for 
which  mark  of  confidence  I  thank  you  very  much,  it  is 
not  presumptuous  to  assume  that  you  think  I  have  some- 
thing to  say  which  may  help  you  somewhat  in  the  great 
work  upon  which  you  have  entered,  which  is,  to  quote 
from  the  preamble  to  your  Constitution  ^Ho  assist  in 
the  removal  of  the  unjust  features  of  the  present  labor 
system." 

I  shall  first  make  a  few  practical  comments  and  sug- 
gestions on  some  of  the  features  of  your  declaration  of 
principles,  contained  in  this  preamble,  and  then  pass  on 
to  more  general  considerations  affecting  your  organization. 

The  second  principle  you  announce  is : 

'^That  for  united  effort  there  is  need  of  a  Central 
Society  which  shall  gather  together  those  already  devoted 
to  the  cause  of  organization  among  women,  shall  collect 
statistics  and  publish  facts,  shall  be  ready  to  furnish  in- 
formation and  advice,  and,  above  all,  shall  continue  and 
increase  agitation  on  this  subject." 

Now,  you  have  constituted  yourselves  this  central  so- 
ciety, and  it  is  to  be  your  province  to  furnish  information 

1  At  Cooper  Union,  February  2,  1888 ;  Miss  Perkins  presided.  See 
letter,  top  of  p.  136. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    373 

and  advice  and  to  continue  and  increase  agitation.  Let  me 
beg  of  you  to  make  yourselves  ready  to  do  this  work  wisely. 
These  questions  which  you  are  taking  up  are  not  new ;  they 
have  been  discussed  and  written  about  even  in  their  present 
forms  for  more  than  one  hundred  years.  There  are  many 
wise  books,  and  unhappily  many  fooUsh  books  too,  already 
written  upon  them,  and  in  order  to  make  yourselves  author- 
ities upon  them,  you  must  study  what  has  already  been 
said,  and  learn  what  has  already  been  done  about  them. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  appointment  of  a  Committee 
on  Reading  to  mark  out  a  course  of  study  for  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Society,  and  to  procure  the  books  from  libraries 
and  supply  them  to  the  members  in  turn,  would  be  a  very 
wise  step.  You  need  to  saturate  your  minds  with  the 
subjects  connected  with  the  aims  of  your  Society.  You 
cannot  know  too  much  of  what  has  been  said  and  of  what 
is  being  said  by  students  of  the  labor  problems.  You 
must  make  yourselves  masters  of  the  subject. 

The  first  of  the  '^Specific  Objects  of  the  Society"  is 
stated  as  follows : 

^'To  found  trade  organizations  in  such  trades  where 
they  do  not  exist,  and  to  encourage  and  assist  existing 
labor  organizations,  to  the  end  of  increasing  wages  and 
shortening  hours." 

Now  it  seems  to  me  a  mistake  to  have  given  the  increas- 
ing of  wages  precedence  over  the  shortening  of  hours.  The 
latter  I  believe  to  be  the  more  important  object,  and  it  is 
also  the  one  upon  which  you  can  the  more  easily  secure 
public  sympathy.  I  believe  it  to  be  the  more  important 
because  securing  leisure  affords  the  opportunity  for  im- 


374  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

provement  in  intelligence  and  in  character,  and,  as  the 
natural  consequence,  improvement  also  in  work  and  in 
wages.  It  is  a  reasonable  object,  and  can  be  proved  to 
be  so  to  the  public  if  the  right  steps  are  taken.  There  is 
no  question  that,  up  to  a  certain  point,  more  work  can  be 
done  in  short  than  in  long  hours,  and  the  shorter  hours 
are  therefore,  up  to  that  point,  as  much  for  the  benefit 
of  the  employers  and  of  the  public,  as  of  the  hand  workers. 
What  is  that  point  ?    That  is  for  you  to  discover. 

That,  even  in  piece-work,  as  much  can  be  done  and 
earned  in  ten  hours  as  in  eleven  was  proved  in  some  large 
woolen  mills  in  New  England,  where  the  owners  desired 
to  reduce  the  hours  from  eleven  to  ten,  and  the  hands 
objected,  but  were  persuaded  to  try  it,  and  found  they 
earned  as  much  as  before.  Whether  the  same  rule  would 
hold  good  as  between  ten  hours  and  nine,  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  believe  that  it  probably  would,  as  the  natural  result  of 
more  leisure  would  be  increased  health,  strength,  energy, 
intelligence,  and,  I  think,  increased  conscientiousness  also. 

Nothing  could  be  better  than  the  first  part  of  your 
second  object : 

''By  using  all  the  means  in  our  power  to  enforce  the 
existing  laws  relating  to  the  protection  of  women  and 
children  in  shops  and  factories;  investigating  and  pro- 
testing against  all  violations  of  said  laws ;  also,  whenever 
possible,  promoting  legislation  on  this  subject." 

And  a  committee  to  be  charged  with  the  duty  of  spread- 
ing the  knowledge  of  the  present  laws,  and  teaching  those 
who  need  their  protection  how,  and  to  whom,  to  make 
complaints  of  their  violation,  would  do  great  good. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    375 

The  framing  of  new  laws  is  a  still  more  important  mat- 
ter, but  one  not  to  be  lightly  entered  upon,  until  you 
have  prepared  yourselves  by  serious  study  to  suggest  and 
support  wise  measures  which  will  not  produce  more  harm 
than  good,  as  is  too  often  the  case  with  many  laws,  the 
objects  of  which  are  of  the  best. 

In  your  fourth  object,  which  reads : 

"To  investigate  and  protest  against  all  cases  that  are 
credibly  brought  to  our  notice  of  cruel  and  tyrannical 
treatment  on  the  part  of  employers  and  their  managers, 
open  robbery  by  withholding  pay,  or  underhand  theft  in 
imposing  fines  and  docking  wages  on  trivial  grounds, 
shameful  indecency  in  the  arrangement  of  shops,  and 
abusive  or  insulting  language  to  the  helpless  and  defence- 
less women  employees," 

we  come  to  the  most  dangerous  ground  upon  which  you 
will  have  to  tread,  full  of  snares  and  pitfalls  for  your 
feet,  and  where  you  will  surely  be  engulfed  unless  you 
guard  yourselves  by  the  highest  sense  of  duty.  You  will 
have  to  do  what  it  is  very  hard  for  anyone  to  do,  —  what, 
unhappily,  women  almost  never  do.  You  must  look  at 
both  sides;  you  must  be  just.  Justice  is  the  highest 
attribute  of  man,  for  to  be  just  is  to  see  and  do  the  truth. 
As  I  have  said,  women  are  seldom  just,  because  they 
allow  personal  feeUngs,  whether  of  selfishness,  friendship 
or  sympathy  to  bUnd  them  to  the  other  side ;  they  even 
pride  themselves  on  saying,  where  their  better  feelings  are 
engaged,  that  there  is  no  other  side.  Now  this  is  the 
weakness  you  must  guard  yourselves  against.  Ejiowing, 
as  you  do,  the  wrongs  and  sufferings  of  one  side,  which  are 


376  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

often  so  great  as  almost  to  overpower  all  possibility  of 
seeing  anything  else,  seeing,  as  you  do,  injustice  which 
fills  you  with  horror  and  indignation,  yet  you  must  for 
the  sake  of  righting  those  wrongs,  in  the  hope  of  de- 
stroying that  injustice,  constrain  yourselves  to  pause,  to 
consider  what  excuse  there  may  be  on  the  other  side,  and 
you  must  hear  and  try  patiently  to  study  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  employer.  You  know,  if  you  stop  a 
moment  to  remember,  that  he  has  difficulties,  for  he  often 
succumbs  to  them.  I  believe  it  is  said  that  a  great  many 
more  than  half  the  men  who  go  into  business  fail,  which 
means  that  the  difficulties  are  so  great  that  half  the 
employers  cannot  conquer  them.  Remember,  too,  that 
apart  from  all  considerations  of  justice,  it  is  bad  policy 
to  increase  too  far  the  difficulties  of  employers.  The 
emploj^ers  are  now,  and  will  be  until  we  reach  manufactur- 
ing cooperation,  far  more  important  to  the  people  they 
employ,  than  they  are  to  them,  and  you  know  that  every 
failure  throws  work  people  out  of  employment  and  causes 
much  distress.  I  believe  in  the  right  to  strike ;  but  re- 
member that  a  strike  is  like  war ;  it  brings  great  misery 
with  it ;  and  remember  that  there  are  some  places  where 
the  work  people  by  striking  have  driven  the  employers 
away,  and  have  left  themselves  with  no  means  of  living. 
Remember  that  you  must  not  place  yourselves  in  the 
position  of  enemies  attacking,  but  of  judges,  hearing  and 
weighing  evidence,  and  remember,  above  all,  that  your 
sympathies  are  all,  inevitably,  on  one  side,  and  that,  there- 
fore, you  must  try  to  lean  towards  the  other,  if  you  would 
even  approach  a  just  decision. 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    377 

And  now  I  want  to  say  something  about  what  seems  to 
me  the  great  possibiHties  of  your  Society.  The  sufferings 
and  the  wrongs  of  working  women  have  for  years  been 
described  and  talked  about,  and  have  excited  pity  and 
indignation,  and  yet  no  one  has  had  the  sUghtest  power 
to  remedy  them.  The  great  machine,  of  which  we  are  all 
a  part,  has  rolled  on,  crushing  the  happiness  and  life  out 
of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  women;  and  many  other 
women,  who  would  gladly  have  given  their  lives  to  have 
saved  their  sisters,  have  themselves  helped  to  trample 
them  still  lower  in  the  dust.  It  is  not,  as  I  say,  that  they 
are  careless,  but  that  they  are  ignorant;  they  do  not 
know  what  causes  the  injustice ;  they  do  not  know  how 
it  is  to  be  remedied ;  they  do  not  even  know,  in  any  dis- 
tinct way,  what  the  injustice  is,  what  the  sufferings  are. 
They  are  as  helpless  on  their  side  as  the  working  women 
who  have  to  suffer  are  on  theirs. 

Now  you  can  put  an  end  to  this  ignorance  and  help- 
lessness, you,  who  have  joined  yourselves  together  to 
help  working  women,  you,  who  are  working  women  your- 
selves and  know  the  conditions  amid  which  you  work, 
you,  who  already  have  the  knowledge  of  facts,  and  are 
going  to  bring  your  intelligence  to  bear  upon  these  facts, 
and  study  them,  until  you  learn  what  they  mean,  why 
they  exist,  and  how  they  can  be  changed.  You  are  going 
to  stand  between  your  sisters  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other,  between  the  toilers  who  are  underpaid  and  over- 
worked, and  the  women  who  are  pining  for  want  of  work 
and  are  supported  in  enforced  idleness,  and  you  are  going 
to  open  a  pathway  between  the  two. 


378  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

And,  now,  how  can  you  fit  yourselves  for  this  noble 
part  of  interpreters  between  sets  of  people  so  far  apart 
that,  without  you,  or  some  one  in  your  place,  it  seems  as  if 
they  could  never  understand  each  other?  As  I  have 
already  said,  you  must,  first  of  all,  be  just,  and  then  you 
must  set  yourselves  to  discover  the  causes  of  the  wrongs 
which  exist  today  in  our  social  fabric,  and  the  remedies 
which  may  be  appUed  to  them.  But  you  must  remember 
that  it  is  not  individuals  who  are  to  blame,  that  they, 
as  well  as  you,  that  we  all  are  parts  of  a  system  which  has 
grown  up,  which  binds  us  all,  and  for  which  no  man,  no 
hundred  men,  no  thousand  men,  are  to  blame,  but  which 
sweeps  all  men  and  women  along,  unable  to  resist  its 
mighty  current,  and  that  the  problem  before  us  is  to  study, 
all  together,  how  to  change  the  system,  how  to  keep  what 
is  good  in  it,  and  leave  behind  us  what  is  bad. 

If  the  present  system  is  harder  on  some  people  than  on 
others,  as  it  most  certainly  is,  it  is  natiu-al  that  those  who 
suffer  from  its  weaknesses  and  maladjustments  should 
realize  them  strongly,  and  that  those  who  do  not  suffer, 
but  who  even  profit  by  them,  should  scarcely  realize 
them  at  all,  and  should  be  inclined,  until  they  are  taught 
better,  to  think  it  a  pretty  good  system  after  all,  and  to 
dread  changes. 

It  is  your  work  to  teach  them  better ;  you  must  show 
them  the  evils  that  exist,  and,  without  claiming  that  they 
are  responsible  for  what  they  never  made  and  cannot 
unmake,  point  out  to  them  what  are  the  weaknesses 
and  maladjustments  of  the  present  system. 

As  an  organization  of  women,  it  behooves  you  especially 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    379 

to  maintain  each  one  of  you  her  own  independence  of 
thought  and  character.  Do  not  bUndly  follow  any  leader. 
Discuss  and  consult  and  strive  each  one  to  cherish  in  her- 
self a  sense  of  her  own  personal  responsibihty  for  the  acts 
of  the  Society.  In  that  way  you  will  reap  the  advantage 
of  association ;  you  will  strengthen  and  help  each  other, 
and  your  joint  action  will  have  the  force  of  all  its  com- 
bined members.  Whereas,  if,  without  thought,  you  bUndly 
follow  wherever  one  or  two  of  the  most  impetuous  among 
you  may  lead,  you  will  not  only  fail  to  attain  your  objects, 
but  your  failure  will  bring  renewed  discredit  on  the  efforts 
both  of  women  and  labor  organizations. 

As  women,  also,  you  need  to  be  especially  on  your  guard 
against  scolding.  However  just  the  cause  she  may  defend, 
a  scolding  57oman  is  a  terror  to  all  men;  no  one  will 
listen  to  her,  no  one  will  sympathize  with  her ;  she  only 
injures  her  own  cause.  ^  You  mus¥  conciliate  and  not 
antagonize.  You  must  oe  dignified,  "generous,  noble. 
You  must  make  yourselves  respected  by  your  wisdom, 
your  patience,  your  fairness,  by  the  cheerful  courage  with 
which  you  press  on  to  attain  your  high  objects,  —  and 
that  they  are  high,  who  can  doubt?  To  help  to  raise 
labor,  what  is  it  but  to  help  to  raise  mankind? 

You  must  be  inspired  by  the  highest  patriotism,  for  it 
is  true,  as  an  Enghsh  author  says,  that 

"The  American  Repubhc  is  founded  on  the  sovereignty 
of  the  people,  and  it  will  prosper  or  perish  according  as 
the  mental  and  moral  status  of  the  sovereign  people  is 
high  or  low.  The  question  whether  labor  in  America  will 
in  futm-e  sustain,  improve  upon  or  degrade  from  its  once 


380  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

high  condition  is  one  beside  which  every  other  national 
problem,  social,  religious  or  political,  is  a  matter  of  trifling 
moment,  for  upon  this  depends  the  destiny  of  the  greatest 
state,  and  the  life  of  the  most  beneficent  government  which 
the  world  has  ever  seen/' 

But  you  must  be  inspired  by  a  higher  motive  than 
patriotism  —  by  the  love  of  your  fellow-men  —  of  all 
your  fellow-men,  rich  and  poor.  Do  not  love  the  poor  and 
hate  the  rich,  but  have  as  much  patience  with  the  rich  as 
you  have  with  the  poor.  Feel  the  brotherhood  of  man, 
and  do  not,  in  your  thoughts,  shut  any  one  outside  that 
brotherhood.     Emerson  says : 

'^  Hostility,  bitterness  to  persons,  and  to  the  age,  indi- 
cate infirm  sense,  unacquaintance  with  men,  who  are  really 
at  top  selfish,  and  really  at  bottom  fraternal,  alike,  iden- 
tical,'' and  Jesus  says:  ^^Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself." 

Industrial  Peace  ^ 

What  is  extraordinary  and  abnormal  and,  consequently, 
unusual,  of  course  catches  and  holds  the  attention  more 
readily  than  a  continuous  and  orderly  development,  al- 
though the  latter  may  be  of  vastly  more  intrinsic  value 
to  mankind  than  the  disturbances  which  startle  and  terrify 
by  their  violence.  It  is  therefore  natural,  but  none  the 
less  to  be  regretted,  that  public  attention  is  constantly 
attracted  to  all  the  painful  and  deplorable  episodes  of  the 
movement   for   the   emancipation   of   the   workingman, 

1  Published  in  The  Charities  Review  for  January,  1893.  Reprinted 
in  pamphlet  form. 


WORK   FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    381 

while  the  great  forward  march  of  the  last  twenty-five  years 
in  England,  and  more  lately  in  this  country,  the  tre- 
mendous triumphs  of  justice  and  right,  the  victories  of 
intelligence  and  equity  over  ignorance  and  greed,  are  quite 
unknown  to  the  mass  of  employers,  as  well  as  to  the  public 
generally,  and  their  records  buried  in  official  reports,  or 
in  books  read  only  by  workingmen  and  students. 

The  Labor  Question  is,  after  all,  only  another  phase  of 
the  Liberty  Question,  which  has  confronted  the  human  race, 
in  one  form  or  another,  in  all  its  contests  since  history  be- 
gan ;  it  is  simply  a  question  of  justice  as  opposed  to  tyranny, 
and  the  only  solution,  the  acknowledgment  of  equal  rights. 
As  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  with  the  old  Adams  spirit, 
said  in  an  article  published  in  Scribner's  Magazine  in  1889, 
entitled  ^'The  Prevention  of  Railroad  Strikes  "  : 

''It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  dispose  of  these  difficult 
matters  in  town-meeting.  Nevertheless  the  town-meeting 
must  be  at  the  base  of  any  successful  plan  for  disposing 
of  them.  The  end  in  view  is  to  bring  the  employer, 
who  in  this  case  is  the  company,  represented  by  its  pres- 
ident and  board  of  directors,  and  the  employees  into 
direct  and  immediate  contact  through  a  representative 
system.  When  thus  brought  into  direct  and  immediate 
contact,  the  parties  must  arrive  at  results  through  the 
usual  method,  that  is,  by  discussion  and  rational  agree- 
ment. .  .  .  The  movement  follows  the  lines  of  action 
with  which  the  people  of  this  coimtry  are  most  familiar. 
The  path  indicated  is  that  in  which  for  centm-ies  they  have 
been  accustomed  to  tread.  It  has  led  them  out  of  many 
difficulties;  why  not  out  of  this  difficulty ?'' 

Personal  despotism  has  been  driven  out  of  all  civilized 


382  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

countries  as  a  form  of  government,  simply  because  the 
people  rendered  despotism  too  uncomfortable  for  the  des- 
pot. Representative  government  has  been  forced  upon 
Europe,  not  adopted  because  the  governing  classes  wished 
to  give  up  their  prerogative;  and  in  like  manner,  rep- 
resentative government  in  many  important  industrial 
fields  has  been  forced  upon  employers,  although  it  is  to  be 
said  to  their  honor  that  in  some  cases,  the  employers  have 
welcomed  it  and  have  recognized  its  moral  as  well  as  its 
material  advantages. 

There  is  little  doubt  also  that  the  representative  system 
in  the  conduct  of  an  industry  requires  higher  moral  and 
intellectual  qualities  in  all  the  parties  represented  than 
are  necessary  in  the  realm  of  government,  and  this  ex- 
plains why  its  adoption  in  this  new  field  is  less  rapid. 
The  very  fact  that  it  must  be  voluntarily  adopted,  even 
though  under  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  and  that  its 
maintenance  is  due  to  moral  sanctions  only,  shows  that 
it  can  be  established  only  by  and  among  men  of  high  moral 
and  intellectual  development.  It  requires  justice  and 
intelligence,  that  is,  the  will,  and  also  the  power,  to  see 
the  other  side,  and  it  requires  good  faith ;  and  these  are 
noble  qualities,  and  qualities  which  we  like  to  think  are 
peculiarly  American. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  pleasing  to  learn  that  while  the 
representative  system  has  for  twenty-three  years  been  a 
signal  success  in  some  of  the  great  English  trades,  and  has 
been  steadily  gaining  ground  in  that  country,  with  no 
conspicuous  failure  anywhere,  with  us  very  many  efforts 
toward  it  have  been  tried  and  have  proved  abortive, 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    383 

and  that  we  have  no  instance  of  a  successful  attempt  that 
is  more  than  eight  years  old. 

The  defeat  of  justice  which  has  disgraced  much  of  our 
labor  history  is  due,  it  is  fair  to  say,  almost  equally  to 
employers  and  employees;  whichever  side  has  had  the 
power  has  unfortunately  used  it  tjo-annically.  The  ex- 
ceptions to  this  rule  are,  however,  all  the  more  worthy 
of  honor ;  and  it  is  for  the  sake  of  acknowledging  our  debt 
to  the  men  who  have  done  justly,  and  also  of  presenting 
them  as  an  example  to  their  fellow-employers  and  fellow- 
employees,  that  I  wish  to  give  at  least  a  sketch  of  the 
development  of  an  equitable  system  in  two  important 
trades  in  our  own  country. 

During  the  summer  of  1884,  there  was  a  two  months^ 
strike  of  bricklayers  in  New  York  City  which  caused  great 
loss  to  both  the  bricklayers  themselves  and  the  builders, 
and  left  many  questions  unsettled  when  it  was  ended. 
Experience  had  taught  both  sides  a  lesson,  however,  and 
in  March,  1885,  a  conference  was  held  between  the  Master 
Builders'  Association  and  the  Committee  of  the  General 
Good  of  the  Bricklayers'  Unions  to  discuss  the  various 
matters  of  mutual  interest ;  the  results  were  so  satis- 
factory that  a  permanent  representative  body  was  created, 
composed  of  an  equal  number  of  delegates  from  both  sides, 
duly  elected  each  year.  The  official  name  of  this  body 
is  ''The  Joint  Arbitration  Committee  of  the  Mason 
Builders'  Association  and  the  Bricklayers'  Unions,"  and 
at  its  organization  provision  was  made,  in  case  of  non- 
agreement  upon  any  point,  for  the  selection  of  an  umpire, 
whose  decision  should  be  binding  on  both  sides.     There 


384  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

could  be  no  stronger  proof  of  the  justice  and  good  sense 
which  have  ruled  in  the  deliberations  of  this  self-con- 
stituted body  than  the  fact  that,  during  the  eight  years 
of  its  existence,  it  has  never  been  necessary  to  appoint  an 
umpire,  every  question  having  been  decided  by  the  com- 
mittee itself. 

At  first,  weekly  meetings  were  held,  and  at  these  meet- 
ings the  general  interests  of  the  trade  were  frequently 
discussed.  Then  there  was  business  only  for  a  meeting 
once  a  month,  and  latterly  meetings  are  held  still  less 
frequently,  except  in  the  spring,  when  the  committee 
meets  often  to  discuss  and  agree  upon  the  wages  for  the 
year,  and  to  draw  up  the  mutual  agreement  between  the 
Association  and  the  Unions.  This  agreement  covers 
the  hours  to  be  worked,  the  amount  of  pay  for  overtime, 
the  frequency  of  payments,  and  other  matters  of  impor- 
tance, besides  the  amount  of  wages.  When  the  Joint  Com- 
mittee was  first  organized,  the  bricklayers^  wages  were 
forty  cents  an  hour,  and  nine  hours  was  the  working  day 
every  day  except  Saturday.  Now  the  wages  are  fifty 
cents  an  hour,  and  the  working  day  is  eight  hours.  There 
has  not  been  a  strike  among  the  bricklayers  since  1884. 
Even  during  the  past  season,  when,  to  speak  mildly,  every 
other  trade  was  at  least  very  much  unsettled,  there  was 
no  trouble  between  the  builders  and  the  bricklayers.  All 
difficulties  are  settled  at  the  meetings  of  the  delegates  of 
the  Builders'  Association  and  the  Bricklayers'  Unions, 
being  discussed  until  an  agreement  is  reached. 

Remembering  what  a  strike  means ;  what  misery  and 
want  it  entails  upon  those  who  take  part  in  it ;  what  loss 


WORK  FOR   THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    385 

to  the  whole  community ;  what  bitter  feeling,  what  anger 
and  hatred,  it  arouses ;  one  cannot  but  feel  a  deep  sense 
of  gratitude  and  an  admiration  for  the  men,  employers 
and  employees,  who  have  had  the  wisdom  and  self-control 
to  establish  and  maintain  so  reasonable,  so  Christian,  a 
method  of  settling  the  questions  of  mutual  interest  to  them. 

The  second  instance  of  a  successful  understanding  be- 
tween employers  and  employees  which  I  shall  describe 
is  that  between  the  manufacturers  and  the  various  unions 
of  hat-makers  of  Danbury,  Connecticut.  For  thirty-five 
years  before  the  year  1885  there  had  been  almost  a  con- 
stant warfare  between  the  manufacturers  and  the  work- 
men ;  but  in  the  autumn  of  that  year  the  Directors  of  the 
National  Associations  of  Fur-Hat  Finishers  and  Makers 
appointed  a  committee  of  five  to  confer  with  the  manu- 
facturers of  fur  hats  in  regard  to  the  present  state  of  trade, 
and  the  way  to  improve  it  and  the  condition  of  those  em- 
ployed in  it.  This  committee  respectfully  invited  the 
fur-hat  manufacturers  to  unite  in  an  organization  to  act 
in  concert  with  our  associations  in  the  adoption  of  such 
measures  as  will  tend  to  establish  and  maintain  harmonious 
relations  between  the  manufacturers  and  their  employees, 
and  promote  the  best  interests  of  both  parties. 

The  manufacturers  responded  to  this  invitation,  and 
a  convention,  at  which  sixty-three  were  present,  was  held 
in  New  York,  on  October  25, 1885.  Mr.  Edmund  Tweedy, 
of  Danbury,  in  an  address  to  the  Convention,  spoke  as 
follows : 

"I  will  venture  to  say  that  the  situation  in  which  we 
find  ourselves  is  without  precedent  in  this  or  any  other 

2c 


386  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

country.  For  the  workingmen  in  a  trade  to  ask  their 
employers  to  organize  themselves  into  an  association  is 
a  fact  so  surprising  that  we  may  well  question  its  signif- 
icance. The  fact  itself  seems  to  me  to  place  the  sincerity 
of  the  jom^neymen  beyond  all  doubt ;  for  labor  is  naturally 
distrustful  of  organized  capital,  and  they  cannot  be  un- 
conscious of  the  power  which  such  an  organization  will 
give  us ;  and  it  also  shows  their  confidence  that  the  power 
will  not  be  unjustly  used  against  them.  They  are  entitled 
to  equal  sincerity  and  confidence  on  om*  part. 

'^What,  then,  does  this  invitation  mean?  It  means,  as 
I  imderstand  it,  that  the  journeymen  believe  it  is  for  the 
best  interests  of  both  parties  that  they  and  we  should 
live  in  peace  and  harmony  together,  and  that  by  mutual 
interchange  of  views  and  by  concert  of  action  it  is  possible 
to  improve  the  condition  of  trade,  remove  many  of  its 
difficulties,  and  make  it  more  profitable  to  all  parties. 
They  perceive  that  to  attain  these  ends  it  is  necessary  that 
there  should  be  thorough  organization  of  the  employers 
as  well  as  of  the  workingmen,  and  they  invite  us  to  form 
such  an  organization,  and  pledge  themselves  to  cooperate 
with  us  in  all  reasonable  and  proper  efforts  to  accomplish 
the  desired  objects.  Their  plan  contemplates,  as  I  am 
advised,  the  admission  of  all  those  at  present  employed 
at  the  trade  into  their  association,  the  bringing  of  inde- 
pendent shops  under  reasonable  association  rules,  the 
appointment  of  committees  of  conference,  representing 
both  parties,  to  consider  matters  of  interest  to  the  trade, 
and  the  adoption  of  joint  measures  which  will  give  to  the 
joint  organizations  the  practically  absolute  control  of  the 
business.  Of  course,  the  primary  object  that  the  work- 
man has  in  view  is  the  increase  of  wages,  but  he  is  willing 
that  it  should  be  accompanied  by  increase  of  profit  to  the 
manufacturer.     Are  these  objects  desirable  ?    To  me  they 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION   OF  LABOR    387 

appear  eminently  so.  If  by  means  of  such  organizations 
the  relations  between  employers  and  employed  could  be 
adjusted  upon  an  enduring  and  satisfactory  basis,  all 
causes  of  strife  and  contention  removed,  the  wages  of  the 
workingmen  and  the  profit  of  the  manufacturer  increased, 
strikes  and  turnouts  prevented,  ''shop  calls"  regulated, 
differences  settled  by  arbitration,  stated  times  for  fixing 
prices  for  labor  established,  reasonable  regulations  for  the 
employment  of  apprentices  provided,  the  health  and  com- 
fort of  the  workmen  looked  after,  and  other  matters  of  like 
character  discussed  and  regulated,  who  would  say  that 
such  results  would  not  be  worth  any  sacrifice  that  they 
might  cost?  .  .  . 

''Our  action  here  today  will  have  consequences  of  great 
moment  to  the  trade,  which  may  be  felt  for  years  to  come, 
and  may,  perhaps,  reach  far  beyond  the  limits  of  our  own 
trade,  and  have  an  important  influence  on  the  relation  of 
capital  and  labor  in  other  industries.  It  behooves  us  to 
act  with  deliberation  and  judgment,  casting  aside  all 
prejudices,  and  remembering  that  the  benefits  of  organiza- 
tion can  only  come  through  the  surrender,  on  the  part  of 
each,  of  some  amount  of  individual  freedom." 

Owing  to  the  opposition  of  manufacturers  in  New 
Jersey,  the  organization  of  a  national  association  was 
prevented  and  the  Danbury  members  of  the  Convention 
organized  a  local  association.  Any  person  or  persons  en- 
gaged in  the  manufacture  of  fur  hats  in  the  town  of  Dan- 
bury  were  eligible  to  membership. 

This  local  association  has  continued  in  harmonious  re- 
lation with  the  several  unions  of  the  trade  for  nearly  seven 
years,  and  the  following  account  of  the  manner  in  which 
their  mutual  interests  are  dealt  with  is  dated  November 
12,  1892 : 


388  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

''Any  differences  which  have  arisen  other  than  those 
relating  to  wages  have  been  adjusted  by  the  conference 
committees  of  the  associations  interested,  each  association 
having  a  standing  committee  of  five  members  elected 
annually.  There  is  no  permanent  joint  board.  ...  In 
case  any  charge  is  to  be  considered  against  either  associa- 
tion or  any  of  its  members  for  violation  of  existing  agree- 
ments, this  charge  is  formally  made  in  writing  and  de- 
livered to  the  president  of  the  association  against  which, 
or  the  members  of  which,  the  charge  is  alleged,  so  that 
full  opportunity  may  be  given  for  its  deliberate  considera- 
tion. Any  party  accused  has  full  opportunity  to  be  heard 
before  the  conference. 

''When  it  is  proposed  by  either  party  to  amend  existing 
agreements,  a  copy  of  the  proposed  amendments  is  pre- 
pared and  served  in  the  same  way.  If  the  matters  to  be 
decided  are  beyond  the  powers  of  the  conference  com- 
mittees, they  report  the  same  to  their  respective  associa- 
tions, with  their  recommendations  in  relation  thereto, 
and  receive  instructions  from  their  associations  for  their 
guidance  in  future  conferences  upon  the  same  subject 
matter.  It  rarely  happens  of  late  that  it  becomes  neces- 
sary to  take  an  appeal  to  the  associations,  as  the  plan  has 
been  so  long  in  operation  that  all  matters  liable  to  lead 
to  any  serious  differences  have  been  definitely  adjusted. 

"All  differences  in  regard  to  wages  are  settled  by  arbi- 
tration committees  appointed  by  the  presidents  of  the 
associations  interested,  which  committees  are  appointed 
in  each  case  of  disagreement.  If  the  joint  arbitration 
committee  cannot  agree,  that  representing  each  associa- 
tion selects  a  disinterested  arbitrator,  and  these  two  select 
a  third,  and  the  decision  of  this  board  is  final. 

"This  system  has  now  been  in  operation  in  Danbury 
for  nearly  seven  years,  and  I  believe  that  both  manufac- 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    389 

turers  and  journeymen  have  found  it  to  be  productive  of 
great  good  in  preventing  serious  disturbances,  in  maintain- 
ing harmonious  relations  between  employer  and  employed, 
and  in  placing  the  rights  and  interests  of  both  upon  a  safe 
and  secure  footing ;  and  I  think  all  are  convinced  that  it 
is  one  of  the  most  successful  attempts  ever  made  to  adjust 
the  labor  question  on  the  lines  of  reason  and  equity." 

There  are  other  instances  where  the  same  spirit  has  been 
exemplified,  but  these  two  are  sufficient  to  show  what  can 
be  done. 

Before  closing,  however,  I  wish  to  say  that  in  thus 
dwelling  upon  the  blessings  which  have  been  brought  about 
by  peaceful  methods  of  settling  differences  between  em- 
ployers and  employees,  I  must  not  be  understood  as  con- 
demning the  methods  of  force  when  these  are  really 
necessarj^  as,  unhappily,  they  sometimes  are,  on  account 
of  the  want  of  intelfigence,  education,  and  principle  on  one 
side  or  the  other.  A  strike  or  a  lockout  may  be  absolutely 
unavoidable,  but  the  very  fact  that  it  is  so  shows  a  low 
state  of  intellectual  and  moral  development  on  the  part 
either  of  the  employers  or  employees  concerned,  or,  per- 
haps, on  the  part  of  both.  If  both  sides  are  just,  if  both 
sides  are  wise,  there  can  be  no  question  that  peaceable 
methods  can  and  will  be  adopted,  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  they  will  succeed. 

It  is  a  most  remarkable  fact  that,  while  this  great  and 
beneficent  movement,  which  seeks  and  finds  industrial 
peace  in  various  ways,  has  been  going  on  with  accel- 
erated speed  and  success  in  England  and  in  this  coun- 
try  for    the    lifetime   of    a    generation,    very   little   is 


390  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

known  about  it  outside  the  circles  of  individuals  whose 
interests  it  directly  affects.  Even  the  very  men  whose 
business  success  and  daily  peace  of  mind  would  be  assured 
by  joining  it  are  ignorant  of  it,  and  as  to  the  general  public 
and  the  newspapers,  one  might  imagine  from  their  tone 
in  speaking  of  the  Labor  Problem  that  it  had  never  been 
solved  and  was  insoluble,  whereas,  here,  in  the  practice 
of  justice  on  both  sides,  the  solution  has  been  already 
found. 

Workingmen's  Rights  in  Property  Created  by  Them  ^ 

The  strength  of  thought  and  expression  in  the  following  letter  is 
a  justification  for  its  reproduction.  The  novelty  of  the  view  taken  by 
Mrs.  Lowell,  the  fact  that  it  is  so  pronounced  and  vigorously  stated  by 
a  woman,  deserves  that  the  production  should  have  some  permanent 
shape,  in  order  that  it  may  be  rescued  from  the  oblivion  of  a  daily 
paper,  to  which  it  was  first  contributed.  Mrs.  Lowell's  long  and 
most  effective;  work  in  relation  to  charity  in  and  about  New  York, 
makes  it  all  the  more  interesting  that  she  should  employ  her  leisure 
in  trying  to  think  out  one  of  the  most  serious  problems  of  the  time,  and 
endeavor  to  throw  light  upon  the  mute  appeal  of  the  workingman  in 
the  sullen  stubbornness,  or  the  blind  fury  of  a  strike. 

—  Erastus  Wiman. 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune. 

Sir  :  —  The  underlying  conception  of  their  own  rights 
and  wrongs  which  inspired  the  recent  action  of  the  men  at 
Homestead,  and  which  is  also  the  animating  principle 
of  members  of  labor  organizations  who  strike  but  yet 
refuse  to  allow  others  to  do  the  work  which  they  will  not 
do,  although  it  has  often  been  stated  more  or  less  clearly, 
is  certainly  not  understood  by  the  generality  of  thinking 
persons. 

1  Published  in  pamphlet  form  in  1893  by  the  Farrington  Company 
of  New  York. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    391 

Members  of  labor  organizations,  who  are  often  intelli- 
gent men  and  men  who  have  studied  both  the  history  and 
principles  of  the  labor  question,  regard  themselves  as 
contending  for  liberty  against  tyrannical  power,  and  as  the 
inheritors  of  the  spirit  of  all  the  men  in  the  past  who  have 
defended  their  own  rights  and  the  rights  of  others  against 
oppressors.  Ridiculous  as  this  view  appears  to  those  who 
regard  them  simply  as  violent  lawbreakers  and  thieves, 
it  is  well  for  persons  who  desire  to  be  fair-minded  and  to 
do  justice  to  their  fellow-men,  to  look  a  little  more  closely 
into  their  claims  and  to  compare  their  conduct  with  that 
of  others,  who  in  times  past  were  regarded  by  those 
whom  they  resisted  in  exactly  the  same  light,  although  now 
it  is  the  custom  to  call  them  heroes. 

To  go  no  further  back  than  the  men  who  began  our  own 
Revolution;  in  Massachusetts,  Samuel  Adams  was  out- 
lawed, and  a  price  set  on  his  head  by  the  authorities  he 
defied,  and  the  men  who  threw  overboard  the  tea  from  the 
ships  in  Boston  Harbor  allowed  no  consideration  for  the 
sacredness  of  private  property  to  restrain  them  in  what 
they  thought  a  patriotic  duty,  but  they  were  doubtless 
regarded  as  thieves  by  the  unhappy  merchants  to  whom 
the  tea  belonged. 

Those  men  in  Massachusetts  were  fighting  against  the 
existing  order  of  things ;  they  were  rebels  and  revolution- 
ists ;  they  intended,  most  of  them  unconsciously  at  first, 
to  substitute  for  the  form  of  government  they  were  resist- 
ing a  new  one,  and  one  which  has  since  then  been  acknowl- 
edged by  a  large  part  of  the  civilized  world  as  the  true 
and  ideal  form  of  government,  although  at  that  time,  to 
the  bulk  of  mankind  it  seemed  to  be  the  craziest  sub- 
version not  only  of  what  was  natural  and  safe,  but  of 
God^s  laws. 

Now  the  trade  union  men  of  today  are  also  contending 


392  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

for  a  new  order  of  things,  not  in  the  poHtical,  but  in  the 
industrial  world ;  they  are  also  rebels  and  revolutionists, 
whom  the  existing  industrial  authorities  will,  of  course, 
seek  to  overcome,  but  who  are  justified  in  using  force  in 
defence  of  what  they  consider  their  rights,  on  the  same 
grounds  that  have  justified  all  rebels  from  the  beginning 
of  history.  Legally  they  are  wrong;  morally  they  are 
right;  intellectually  they  may  be  right  or  wrong.  The 
fact  that  they  hold  a  theory  of  their  rights  and  of  the 
rights  of  private  property  in  general  quite  different  from 
that  held  by  their  employers  and  by  most  thinking  and 
unthinking  men  and  women,  does  not  prove,  judging  from 
analogy,  that  their  view  is  necessarily  wrong. 

The  theory  to  which  I  refer,  and  which,  whether  put 
into  words  or  not,  is  firmly  fixed  in  the  minds  of  all  trade 
unionists,  is  that  the  man  who  by  his  labor  for  a  series  of 
years  helps  to  build  up  a  great  business,  be  it  factory, 
mine  or  railroad,  thereby  acquires  a  distinct  right  of 
property  in  that  business,  while  the  general  view  is  that 
it  is  only  the  man  who  helps  to  build  up  the  business  by 
his  money  who  has  a  property  right  in  it.  While  always 
acknowledging  the  right  of  an  employer  to  discharge  a 
workman  for  just  cause,  the  trade  unionist  has  his  own 
view  of  what  constitutes  a  just  cause,  and  does  not  include 
under  that  head  the  exercise  of  the  legal  right  to  belong 
to  political,  religious  or  trade  associations,  nor  does  he 
acknowledge  that  taking  part  in  a  strike  is  a  just  cause 
of  discharge,  or  that  by  reason  of  such  action  (belonging 
to  a  trade  union  or  taking  part  in  a  strike)  a  workman 
loses  his  property  right  in  the  business  he  has  helped  to 
build  up  by  his  labor.  This  view  is  .the  ground  upon 
which  workingmen,  locked  out  as  at  Homestead,  or  even 
on  strike,  refuse,  so  long  as  they  can,  to  allow  other 
men  to  come  in  and  take  possession  of  what  they  call, 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    393 

to  the  scornful  amusemeDt  of  their  employers,  their 
places. 

This  is  evidently  a  new  conception  of  the  rights  of  pri- 
vate property,  and  no  especial  means  by  which  it  might 
be  put  into  practice  have  as  yet,  so  far  as  I  know,  been 
pointed  out,  even  by  the  men  who  defend  the  principle 
itself  with  their  lives,  as  did  the  men  locked  out  at  Home- 
stead. The  fact  that  the  wages  of  only  three  hundred  out 
of  the  three  thousand  men  employed  in  the  Homestead 
mills  were  to  be  affected  by  the  proposed  reduction  proves 
that  the  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  whole  body  was  one 
of  principle,  and  presents  a  spectacle  of  industrial  pubhc 
spirit  which  could  not  have  been  found,  probably,  in  any 
trade  less  well  organized ;  that  is,  in  any  trade  the  mem- 
bers of  which  were  not  educated  to  a  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  men  who  will  not  defend  the  rights  of  their 
fellows  will  soon  lose  their  own. 

The  suggestion  that  the  laws  relating  to  private  property 
may  in  the  future  be  materially  changed  will  be  new  to 
many  persons  who  have  not  studied  carefully  the  prin- 
ciples underlying  those  laws ;  to  such  the  following  quo- 
tation from  a  letter  written  in  1870  by  the  distinguished 
thinker,  Chauncey  Wright,  will  be  very  instructive  : 

''The  rapacity  of  wealth  is,  of  course,  the  taproot  of 
all  these  evils,  the  source  of  the  hostility  which  threatens 
social  institutions.  We  have  got  to  amend  the  great 
Roman  invention,  the  laws  of  property.  .  .  .  Looked  at 
rationally  and  from  a  utilitarian  point  of  view,  the  right 
of  private  ownership  —  the  protection  of  the  individual 
in  the  possession,  accumulation,  consumption,  productive 
administration  and  posthumous  disposal  of  his  surplus 
gain  —  is  founded  simply  and  solely  in  the  motives  they 
afford  to  his  making  such  gains,  and  adding  them,  as  he 
really  does,  in  spite  of  his  seeming  private  appropriation 


394  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  them,  to  the  store  of  pubUc  wealth.  .  .  .  But  so 
far  as  the  laws  of  property  are  inherently,  or  through 
changed  circumstances  have  come  to  be,  productive,  not 
of  increased  gains,  but  of  a  large  and  permanent  class  of 
unproductive  consumers,  so  far  they  are  legalized  robbery, 
and  must  be  abrogated  or  amended  if  justice  is  ever  to  be 
effected  by  legislation,  through  whatever  political  powers. 
''It  is  perhaps  unfortunate  that  the  problem  will  have 
to  be  solved  through  democratic  agencies  and  the  un- 
avoidable ascendency  of  the  will  of  the  masses  in  political 
matters.  But,  after  all,  it  is  a  real  question  which  is  the 
more  untoward  instrument  for  the  really  just  and  wise 
philanthropist  to  work  with,  the  ignorant  and  prejudiced 
masses,  whose  benefit  is  sought,  or  the  equally  prejudiced 
aristocracies,  blinded  by  self-interest,  whose  unjust  privi- 
leges must  be  curtailed.  .  .  .  Democracies  and  aristocra- 
cies are  both  blind,  and  if  led  by  men  of  their  own  sort, 
must  inevitably  carry  the  state  with  them  to  destruction. 
But  do  not  let  us  dwell  despondingly  on  the  powers  and 
tendencies  of  the  instruments  we  have  to  deal  with.  .  .  .'' 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 
Geneva,  Switzerland, 
July  15,  1892. 

Industrial  Conciliation  ^ 

Whenever  a  strike  or  lockout  is  of  sufficient  importance 
to  attract  public  attention,  after  it  has  continued  for  a 
few^days,  there  begins  to  be  talk  of  arbitration  on  the 
part  of  the  press  and  of  the  workingmen  who  are  engaged 
in  the  contest. 

If  arbitration  is  resorted  to,  the  questions  in  dispute  are 

1  For  Live  Question  Bureau,  January,  1896. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    395 

referred  to  one  or  more  arbitrators,  who  hear  both  sides 
and  decide  between  them.  This  is  of  course  a  judicial 
process,  except  that  the  submission  of  the  question  on 
both  sides  is  purely  voluntary,  as  neither  can  force  the 
other  into  court,  and  the  obligation  to  abide  by  the  deci- 
sion is  moral  only,  so  that  there  is  nothing  legally  binding 
in  it. 

Usually  strikes  and  lockouts  are  settled  in  a  less  formal 
way  by  the  intervention  of  persons  inspired  either  by 
private  or  public  interest,  who  act  as  go-betweens  and  run 
from  one  side  to  the  other,  gaining  a  little  concession  first 
here  and  then  there,  smoothing  away  one  difficulty  after 
another,  and  finally  arranging  matters  with  as  little  loss 
of  dignity  as  possible  to  the  contending  parties. 

But  between  civilized  bodies  of  men  whose  services  are 
vitally  important  to  each  other,  who  make  their  living 
by  the  help  of  each  other,  it  is  a  disgrace  that  there  should 
be  these  constantly  recurring  contentions. 

They  arise  only  from  the  selfishness  and  tyranny  of 
men,  unrestrained  by  nobler  qualities,  and  selfishness  and 
tyranny  are  equally  hateful  and  mischievous,  whether  ex- 
hibited by  employers  or  employed.  Unfortunately  which- 
ever side  has  had  the  power  has  usually  exercised  it  in  so 
arrogant  a  manner  and  with  such  unrelenting  harshness 
as  to  goad  the  other  side  to  resistance,  resulting  often  in  a 
state  of  open  warfare  which  has  continued  until  either  one 
side  or  the  other  is  quite  conquered,  when  the  old  series 
of  acts  is  begun  again,  to  end  in  the  same  way,  or  until 
both  sides  are  exhausted. 

The  fact  needs  to  be  emphasized  that  the  same  qualities 


396  JOSEPHINE    SHAW  LOWELL 

have  been  exhibited  by  both  sides,  that  human  nature, 
when  undiscipHned,  is  very  much  the  same  thing  in  mas- 
ters and  in  men,  in  employers  and  employed,  and  that 
neither  side  has  a  right  to  cast  stones,  but  both  should 
cry,  ^'Mea  culpa  !  Mea  culpa  !"  At  some  times  and  in 
some  places  it  is  the  labor  organizations  which  are  dicta- 
torial, while  the  employers  cringe  and  relinquish  all  their 
rights  to  maintain  peace,  but  more  frequently  the  em- 
ployers are  arbitrary  and  tyrannical,  asserting  loudly 
that  they  intend  to  manage  their  own  business  as  they 
choose  and  will  not  be  interfered  with  by  their  workmen. 

Here  is  the  weak  point.  There  will  never  be  justice 
between  employers  and  employees,  and  consequently  there 
will  never  be  a  lasting  peace,  until  the  public  and  the 
employers  recognize  the  claim  of  the  employees  to  a  voice 
in  the  settlements  of  questions  relating  to  wages  and  to 
hours  and  conditions  of  labor.  All  these  questions  are 
of  vital  importance  to  the  employees,  and  do,  in  fact, 
more  nearly  concern  them  than  they  do  the  employers, 
for  in  the  case  of  the  latter  it  is  only  their  business  success, 
or  their  living,  which  is  involved,  while  with  the  employees 
their  living,  their  health  and  indeed  the  happiness  of  their 
whole  lives  are  at  stake.  It  can  scarcely  be  expected  that 
American  citizens  who  have  been  born  and  bred  with  the 
instincts  of  freemen  will  submit  tamely  to  a  system  which 
places  their  welfare  entirely  in  the  hands  of  others. 

This  suggestion  that  the  employees  have  a  right  to  a 
voice  in  what  is  called  their  employers^  business  will  be 
new  to  many,  and  will  at  first  seem  to  be  unreasonable, 
but  the  more  it  is  considered,  the  more  just  it  will  show 


WORK   FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION   OF  LABOR    397 

itself  to  be,  and  it  will  finally  be  acknowledged  to  be  true. 
As  Mr.  William  H.  Sayward,  Secretary  of  the  National 
Association  of  Builders,  an  association  of  employers,  says, 
in  a  lecture  on  the  ''Relation  of  Employer  and  Workman"  : 

''The  labor  question  has  two  component  parts,  the 
employing  or  profit-labor,  and  the  performing  or  wage- 
labor,  and  it  is  folly  to  attempt  to  deal  with  the  question 
at  all  imless  both  parties  are  united  in  the  consideration. 
Neither  party  to  the  joint  interest  can  handle  the  ques- 
tion alone." 

The  next  question  which  presents  itself  is  the  practical 
one,  how  can  employees  be  thus  taken  into  the  councils 
of  their  employers,  and  the  answer  made  by  Mr.  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  for  many  years  State  Railroad  Commis- 
sioner in  Massachusetts,  and  for  many  years  also  President 
of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad,  in  an  article  entitled  "The 
Prevention  of  Railroad  Strikes"  is  one  which  must  cause  a 
responsive  thrill  in  every  American  breast : 

"...  It  will  be  impossible  to  establish  perfectly  good 
faith  and  the  highest  morale  in  the  service  of  the  railroad 
companies,  until  the  problem  of  giving  this  voice  to  em- 
ployees and  giving  it  effectively,  is  solved.  It  can  be 
solved  in  but  one  way:  that  is,  by  representation.  To 
solve  it  may  mean  industrial  peace." 

[Mrs.  Lowell  here  repeated  a  quotation  from  Mr. 
Adams'  article  which  she  used  in  an  earher  paper  entitled 
"Industrial  Peace."]    . 

Mr.  Adams'  solution  is,  however,  unhappily,  so  far  as 
American  railroads  are  concerned,  purely  theoretic,  and  if 


398  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

there  were  not  in  other  industrial  fields  proof  that  the 
principle  he  advocates  is  correct,  arguments  might  be 
presented  against  it,  which  now,  however,  are  invalid, 
since  experience  has  demonstrated  that  the  representative 
system  is  as  useful  in  business  as  in  government.  For 
the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  in  many  large  industries 
in  England,  all  questions  of  wages,  hours  and  conditions 
of  work  have  been  settled,  without  strike  or  lockout,  by 
''Joint  Boards, '^  ''Boards  of  Conciliation''  or  "Arbitra- 
tion Boards,''  on  which  the  associations  of  employers  and 
employees  have  been  represented  by  delegates  duly 
chosen  and  empowered  to  legislate  for  their  constituents, 
and  on  these  boards  the  employers  and  employees  have 
always  had  an  equal  representation.  In  our  country, 
also,  and  in  Belgium,  such  boards  are  known  and  have 
met  with  equal  success,  but  the  practice  of  justice  with 
us  has  been  neither  so  long  nor  so  widely  extended  as  in 
England,  and  strangely  enough  employers  here,  instead 
of  instinctively  recognizing  that  this  is  the  only  solution 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  labor  question,  assume  a  tone 
of  arbitrary  ownership  and  proclaim  their  right  to  issue 
orders  which  must  be  obeyed. 

From  business  men  one  might  have  expected  more 
practical  conduct,  since  it  is  very  evident  that  those 
who  adopt  this  position  do  not  succeed  in  avoiding  labor 
conflicts  and  disturbances  which  cause  them  great  loss  and 
trouble,  while  the  employers  who  recognize  the  justice 
of  their  employees'  claim  to  a  joint  control  in  questions  of 
common  interest  do  escape  them. 

In  the  cases  where  "Joint  Boards"  are  formed,  the  prer 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    399 

liminary  step  usually  is  the  mutual  recognition  that  both 
sides  are  about  equal  in  strength,  that  each  can  injure  the 
other  seriously,  but  that  neither  can  conquer  the  other. 
The  proof  of  this  necessarily  comes  from  the  experience 
of  a  long  series  of  alternating  strikes  and  lockouts,  the 
employees  making  unreasonable  demands  when  trade  is 
good,  the  employers  doing  the  same  when  trade  is  bad, 
a  system  mutually  predatory.  Finally,  it  occurs  to  a 
few  men  on  one  side  or  the  other  that  the  whole  thing  is 
foolish,  wasteful  and  wicked  and  unworthy  of  intelligent 
men  who  make  their  living  by  the  help  of  each  other. 
Tentative  overtures  are  made,  the  most  reasonable  and 
fair-minded  men  on  each  side  talk  over  the  matter  among 
their  fellows,  a  conference  is  proposed,  and  is  held,  and 
with  much  difficulty  at  last  a  ''Joint  Committee,'^  a 
''Wages  Board"  or  a  "Board  of  Conciliation"  is  formed, 
with  equal  representation  from  both  sides,  to  which  is 
delegated  the  power  to  settle  all  questions  relating  to 
wages,  and  conditions  of  work. 

This  sounds  simple  enough,  and  to  a  disinterested  ob- 
server seems  the  only  reasonable  method  of  settling  ques- 
tions which  are  of  the  greatest  importance  to  both  em- 
ployers and  employed,  which  cannot  be  settled  except  by 
mutual  consent,  either  forced  or  voluntary,  and  which 
must  be  settled  if  business  is  to  go  on  at  all. 

And  yet,  the  obstinacy  and  arrogance  of  men  makes 
this  reasonable  arrangement  a  very  difficult  one  to  accom- 
plish and  at  first  a  very  difficult  one  to  carry  out. 

As  I  have  said,  the  two  sides  must  be  about  equal  in 
strength,  or  in  other  words,  both  must  be  well  organized ; 


400  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

there  must  be  a  strong  association  of  employers  and 
a  strong  trade  union  or  other  labor  organization,  both 
of  which  shall  represent  either  the  majority  of  the  em- 
ployers and  workmen  in  the  trade  or  else  the  most  success- 
ful and  best  paid.  This  is  necessary  because  the  '^  Joint 
Committee '^  or  ^' Wages  Board"  must  be  composed  of 
representatives  who  are  authorized  to  bind  their  con- 
stituents, otherwise  their  agreements  would  be  empty 
words. 

Besides  this,  however,  both  representatives  and  the 
organizations  they  represent  must  in  the  main  be  honest 
men,  honorable  men,  intelligent  men,  or  the  plan  will 
fail.  The  employers'  association  and  the  employees' 
union  must  enter  into  the  arrangement  in  good  faith, 
trusting  their  own  representatives,  trusting  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  other  side,  really  wishing  to  have  justice 
done  and  not  wishing  for  unfair  advantages.  With  these 
conditions  success  is  sure. 

The  Rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  and  Industrial 
Conciliation  ^ 

When  the  rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  are  spoken  of, 

capital  does  not,  of  course,  mean  money,  for  money  can 

have  no  rights,  nor  does  labor  mean  work,  for  work  can 

have  no  rights ;  capital  really  means  men  who  have  money 

which  they  wish  to  employ  in  productive  industry,  and 

labor  means  men  who  have  strength  and  skill  which  they 

wish  to  employ  in  productive  industry.     Since,  then,  it 

1  Digest  of  a  pamphlet  published  by  the  Church  Social  Union,  Boston, 
June  15,  1897. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION   OF  LABOR    401 

is  the  rights  of  men  which  are  to  be  considered,  it  will  be 
simpler  and  tend  to  a  better  understanding  of  the  subject 
to  ignore  the  confusing  formula,  capital  and  labor,  and 
talk  about  the  men  who  own  the  capital  and  labor  and 
who  wish  to  find  a  market  for  them,  and  thus  reach  the 
consideration  of  their  rights. 

As  regards  the  men  themselves,  there  is  one  fundamental 
conception  which  is  essential  to  all  rational  and  just  think- 
ing about  them  and  their  relations,  and  that  is  the 
recognition  that  they  are  economically  equals  under  our 
present  social  conditions;  the  man  with  the  money 
which  he  desires  to  employ  productively  is  helpless  to  ac- 
compUsh  his  purpose  unless  he  can  find  men  to  work; 
the  man  with  strength  and  skill  which  he  desires  to  employ 
productively  is  equally  helpless,  unless  he  can  find  men 
to  pay  him  for  his  work.  You  will  note  that  I  said  the 
men  are  economically  equals  under  our  present  social 
conditions,  because  in  a  state  of  nature  the  man  with 
the  strength  and  skill  would  be  able  to  dispense  with 
money,  while  the  man  with  the  money  would  never  be  able 
to  dispense  with  strength  and  skill,  his  own  or  those  of 
some  one  else.  I  am  also  ignoring  the  men  who  combine 
capital  and  labor  in  their  own  persons,  who  possess  at 
once  money,  brains,  strength  and  skill,  for  those  can  be 
classed  for  our  purpose  either  with  one  side  or  the  other, 
and  there  is  no  necessity  to  compUcate  the  question  by 
considering  them  separately.  .  .  . 

Although  the  need  of  capital  and  labor,  or  money  and 
strength,  for  each  other  is  mutual  and  in  the  long  run 
equal,  the  supply  of  capital  has  always  been  limited,  and 

2d 


402  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

the  supply  of  labor  has  usually  been  excessive,  which  in 
itself  would  have  given  capital  the  power  to  dictate  terms. 
In  addition  to  this,  however,  capital  was  usually  in  the 
hands  of  men  of  intelligence  and  of  men  who,  by  means  of 
their  capital,  could  live  while  they  bargained,  and  labor 
was  in  the  hands  of  ignorant  men,  with  no  property  but 
their  strength,  who  must  therefore  suffer  unless  they  could 
dispose  of  it  daily,  and  must  die  if  they  failed  entirely  to 
dispose  of  it,  which  gave  to  capital  a  despotic  power  over 
individual  laborers,  even  though  as  a  whole  labor  was 
always  more  essential  to  capital  than  capital  to  labor. 

But  with  the  development  of  the  trade  union,  the  sit- 
uation had  gradually  changed,  to  a  great  degree,  in  all 
the  trades  where  that  new  force  has  had  a  direct  influence, 
and  to  some  degree  in  all  the  rest ;  and  the  theoretical 
economic  equality  of  the  men  who  possess  capital  and 
of  those  who  possess  labor  has  become  to  some  extent  an 
actual  equality ;  for  now,  in  those  trades  which  have  been 
long  '' organized, '^  labor,  as  well  as  capital,  is  in  the  hands 
of  intelligent  men,  who  have  accumulated  means  upon 
which  to  subsist  while  they  bargain,  and  thus  the  two 
contracting  parties  can  meet  on  equal  terms  and  settle 
their  business  relations  as  other  buyers  and  sellers  settle 
them,  by  a  consideration  of  the  actual  situation  and  a 
reasonable  discussion  and  give  and  take  between  men  of 
equal  intelligence,  knowledge  and  resource. 

Thus  we  are  brought  to  the  question  of  their  rights,  or 
what  they  may  reasonably  and  rightly  demand  of  each 
other  when  they  thus  meet  to  settle  matters  between 
them.     If  my  position  is  correct,  then  they  are  in  exactly 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    403 

the  same  position  as  other  buyers  and  sellers,  and  they 
have  the  right  to  demand  of  each  other  nothing  beyond 
honest  and  courteous  dealing.  They  are  equals,  and  they 
go  into  the  market  and  bargain  with  each  other,  and  each 
has  the  right  to  take  or  leave  what  the  other  has  to  sell, 
according  as  the  bargain  suits  him  or  does  not  suit  him. 
It  is  absurd  to  talk  as  if  it  were  morally  wrong  to  ask  high 
wages  or  morally  wrong  to  offer  low  wages.  Within  the 
limits  of  honesty  and  fair  dealing,  it  is  merely  a  matter 
of  business.  I  say  within  the  limits  of  honesty  and  fair 
dealing,  because,  of  course,  if  the  bargainers  are  not  equal, 
if  for  some  reason,  one  side  has  the  power  to  fix  the  terms, 
and  uses  that  power  unjustly,  either  to  exact  ruinously 
high  wages,  or  to  insist  that  men  shall  work  at  wages  upon 
which  they  and  their  families  cannot  live,  then  it  is  not  a 
question  of  business,  but  of  morals.  It  is  dishonest, 
exactly  as  other  unjust  and  forced  bargains  are  dishonest ; 
and  it  may  also  be  cruel,  as  for  instance,  where  promises 
of  work  are  broken  and  wages  intermittent.  .  .  . 

After  their  bargain  has  been  fairly  adjusted,  the  owners 
of  capital  and  labor  become  employers  and  employed,  and 
then  a  new  set  of  rights  comes  into  existence,  and  these 
are  the  rights  which  most  people  have  in  mind  when  they 
talk  of  the  rights  of  capital  and  labor,  and  it  is  the 
attempt  to  settle  these  rights  which  causes  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  labor  difficulties  that  so  distress  us. 

And  now  I  am  going  to  take  the  liberty  of  turning  the 
whole  question  around,  and  instead  of  trying  to  define 
the  rights  of  employers  and  employed,  I  am  going  to  try 
to  define  their  duties.     It  will  amount  to  the  same  thing 


404  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

in  the  end,  of  course,  for  no  one  can  have  a  right  to  any- 
thing which  is  not  somebody's  duty  to  supply.  Perhaps 
it  may  be  his  own  duty  to  supply  it,  but  there  is  no  right 
without  a  corresponding  duty  on  somebody's  part. 

I  think  all  the  duties  of  employers  and  employees  as 
such  may  be  classed  under  three  heads.  Their  antagonis- 
tic duties,  those  which  may  bring  them  into  antagonism 
with  each  other;  their  common  duties,  those  they  owe 
in  common  to  the  community ;  and  their  mutual  duties, 
those  they  owe  to  each  other.  .  .  . 

First,  then,  the  antagonistic  duties  of  employers  and  em- 
ployed are  those  which  each  owes  to  the  men  of  his  own  class, 
so  to  speak,  the  duties  the  employer  owes  to  his  fellow- 
employers  and  the  workman  to  his  fellow-craftsmen. 

An  employer  should  not  follow  his  own  immediate  in- 
terests selfishly  and  blindly,  destroying  others  engaged  in 
the  same  business  as  himself ;  he  should  not  make  such 
agreements  with  his  employees  as  will  redound  to  his  own 
advantage  and  ruin  his  competitors.  There  is  a  limit  be- 
yond which  competition  even  will  not  drive  an  honest 
and  conscientious  man,  and  that  limit  measures  his  duty 
to  his  fellow-employers.  In  the  same  manner,  a  work- 
man has  duties  towards  his  fellow-workmen,  and,  to  his 
credit  be  it  said,  he  feels  these  duties  far  more  strongly 
than  the  employer  usually  feels  the  corresponding  duty. 
It  is  the  duty  of  a  workman  to  consider  the  effect  of  his 
action  upon  the  welfare  of  his  fellows ;  he  should  not 
accept  wages  and  conditions  of  work  which,  even  though 
they  be  good  for  him  at  the  moment,  will  tend  to  injure 
other  workmen.  .  .  . 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION   OF  LABOR    405 

The  duties  which  employers  and  employees  have  in 
common  are  of  course  those  they  owe  to  the  public  for 
whom  they  work  together  and  from  whom  they  draw 
the  return  for  their  joint  labor.  They  owe  to  them  an 
honest  product,  work  worth  what  they  ask  for  it,  fair 
measure  and  full  time.   .  .  . 

The  mutual  duties,  or  rights,  of  employers  and  em- 
ployees relate,  of  course,  to  the  giving  of  a  fair  day's 
wage  for  a  fair  day's  work,  and  the  giving  of  a  fair  day's 
work  for  a  fair  day's  wage,  and  they  include  from  each 
to  each  honesty,  justice  and  courtesy.  But  even  assuming 
these  qualities  to  exist  on  both  sides,  the  difficulty  lies 
in  deciding  what  is  a  fair  day's  work,  and  what  is  a 
fair  day's  wage.  .  .  . 

The  technical  name  for  the  representative  system  of 
trade  government  is  ^^ Industrial  Conciliation,"  and  the 
distinguishing  features  of  the  system  are : 

1.  Its  recognition  that  the  two  sides  have  an  equal 
right  to  a  voice  in  the  decision  of  all  questions  of  common 
interest ;  and 

2.  The  permanent  character  of  the  machinery  employed. 

In  every  case  of  industrial  conciliation  employers  and 
employees  have  an  equal  number  of  representatives,  and 
the  representatives  have  equal  powers. 

In  all  cases  of  industrial  conciliation  there  is  estab- 
lished a  permanent  board  or  committee,  called  a  ''Board 
of  Conciliation,"  or  ''Joint  Board,"  or  a  "Wages  Board." 

The  most  successful  instance  of  a  board  of  conciliation 
in  this  country  is  that  formed  in  1885  between  the  Mason 
Builders'  Association,  representing  fifty  firms  of  employers 


406  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

in  New  York  City,  and  the  Bricklayers'  Unions,  which 
have  a  membership  of  about  four  thousand.  The  Asso- 
ciation of  Builders  chooses  each  year  eight  representatives 
to  serve  on  the  Joint  Board,  and  the  Bricklayers'  Union 
choose  the  same  number  and  the  sixteen  men  settle  by 
discussion  and  agreement  every  question  which  arises  be- 
tween any  employer  and  employee  in  their  respective  or- 
ganizations. 

This  Joint  Board  holds  monthly  meetings,  if  necessary, 
during  the  year,  but  its  most  important  work  is  the  drawing 
up  of  the  yearly  agreement,  which  is  done  in  the  spring. 

A  comparison  of  the  first  agreement,  made  in  1885,  with 
the  last  one,  made  in  1896,  is  sufficient  to  show  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Board  since  its  inauguration,  and  also 
the  gains  made  by  the  bricklayers  in  shorter  hours  and 
higher  pay,  while  the  fact  that  there  has  been  no  strike 
or  lockout  between  the  members  of  the  Builders'  Associa- 
tion and  the  Bricklayers'  since  the  Board  was  established 
shows  as  plainly  the  gains  of  the  employers  and  of  the 
community  at  large.  .  .  . 

When  this  Joint  Board  was  first  constituted,  it  was  agreed 
that  should  it  be  impossible  on  any  occasion  for  the  mem- 
bers to  come  to  an  agreement,  an  umpire  should  be  chosen 
whose  decision  should  be  binding  on  both  sides.  The  fact 
that,  during  the  twelve  years  in  which  this  Board  has  met 
and  has  discussed  questions  of  great  importance  to  all  its 
members  personally  and  to  the  thousands  of  men  repre- 
sented by  them,  it  has  never  yet  been  necessary  to  appoint 
an  umpire,  speaks  strongly  in  favor  both  of  the  intelligence 
and  justice  of  the  men  chosen  to  act  as  members.  .  .  . 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    407 

During  the  ten  years  that  have  elapsed  since  the  first 
agreement  was  signed,  many  changes  have  been  made, 
questions  of  a  very  grave  character  have  been  presented 
for  action,  and  although  it  sometimes  appeared  as  if  a  very 
determined  effort  was  being  made  to  bring  about  a  dis- 
ruption of  the  good  feeling  that  existed  between  the  two 
bodies,  yet  in  the  end  both  parties  would  give  way  a  little, 
and  finally  the  question  would  be  settled  amicably  — 
and  that  was  done  without  once  calling  in  an  umpire. 
This  fact  alone  shows  that  men  banded  together  for  a 
common  cause  can  do  justice,  one  to  the  other. 

The  history  of  the  Bricklayers  for  the  past  ten  years 
could  be  that  of  every  organized  trade  in  our  community. 

A  still  more  successful  board  is  that  of  the  North  of 
England  Iron  and  Steel  Conciliation  Board,  which  has  had 
an  existence  of  thirty  years  and  settles  all  questions  of 
wages,  etc.,  for  the  whole  trade.  It  is  thoroughly  repre- 
sentative in  character :  one  employer  and  one  delegate 
elected  by  the  workingmen  from  each  firm  in  union  with 
the  Board  constitute  its  membership.  The  Board  meets 
twice  a  year,  but  it  has  a  Standing  Committee  which  meets 
once  a  month  or  oftener,  and  has  power  to  settle  all 
questions,  except  a  general  rise  or  fall  of  wages,  or  the 
selection  of  an  arbitrator  to  fix  such  rise  or  fall.  These 
matters  the  Board  itself  must  act  on.  There  are  two 
secretaries,  one  chosen  by  the  employers  and  one  by  the 
workingmen  of  the  Board. 

Mr.  E.  Trow,  secretary  of  the  workingmen,  in  a  speech 
of  March,  1894,  explains  the  reason  and  manner  of  its 
establishment,   and   describes   the   way  it   has   worked. 


408  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mr.  Trow  said  that  in  1866  he  had  had  experience  of  a 
twenty-two  weeks'  lockout.  In  1866  the  men  were  starved 
into  submission,  and  in  1867  and  1868  the  employers  took 
advantage  of  their  weakness  and  forced  down  the  wages 
to  compensate  them  for  the  cessation.  ...  In  1868  the 
men  met  to  consider  the  advisability  of  forming  a  ''Board 
of  Arbitration  and  Conciliation. ''  They  succeeded  in  estab- 
lishing that  Board,  and  from  the  year  1869  up  to  the  pres- 
ent there  had  not  been  more  than  half  a  dozen  meetings 
either  of  the  Board  or  Committee  which  he  had  not  atten- 
ded. They  found  at  first  that  they  had  many  grievances 
with  which  their  employers  were  not  thoroughly  conversant. 
When  they  first  met  there  was  jealousy  and  suspicion  on 
both  sides.  But  the  employers  afterwards  found  that  the 
representatives  of  the  workmen  were  not  unreasonable 
men,  and  the  workmen's  representative  found  that  when 
face  to  face  the  employers  were  amenable  to  reason.  It 
was  a  positive  fact  that  before  that  time  they  thought 
the  employers  were  not  amenable  to  reason,  and  looked 
upon  them  as  enemies  and  tyrants.  They  were  cautious 
at  first,  but  the  employers  and  workmen  met  around  the 
board  on  an  equality.  The  workmen's  representative 
had  the  same  voting  power  as  the  employers',  the  same 
speaking  power ;  and  from  that  day  to  this  not  a  single 
man  had  been  taken  advantage  of  for  daring  to  differ 
publicly  from  this  employer. 

[The  remaining  pages  of  the  pamphlet  are  devoted  to 
a  description  of  methods  of  conciliation  inaugurated  in 
1869  by  Brewster  &  Co.,  carriage  builders,  of  Broome 
Street,  New  York  City,  and  carried  out  for  three  years.] 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    409 

The  Living  Wage  ^ 

Any  manufacturing  business  which  is  to  continue  in 
existence  must  receive  as  the  price  of  its  product  a  sum 
which  in  the  long  run,  year  in  and  year  out,  will  provide 
for  the  following  payments : 

1.  A  living  wage  for  those  who  do  the  mechanical 
part  of  the  work ;  because  if  they  do  not  receive  a  living 
wage  they  will  cease  to  work,  either  because  they  will  die, 
or  because  they  will  seek  a  living  wage  elsewhere. 

2.  The  usual  rate  of  interest  on  the  capital  invested  in 
the  daily  output ;  because  otherwise  it  will  be  withdrawn 
and  will  be  placed  where  it  will  receive  the  usual  rate. 
Of  course  this  is  not  an  absolute  necessity  for  the  capital 
invested  in  the  plant,  because  that  is  fixed  and  cannot  be 
taken  out. 

3.  A  due  return  to  the  managers  of  the  business  that  is 
sufficient  to  repay  them  for  their  time  and  trouble,  or 
they  will  give  it  up  and  undertake  some  better  paying 
enterprise. 

Thus  every  business  must  strive,  in  order  to  exist,  to 
keep  up  the  price  of  its  product.  Meanwhile,  there  is 
a  constant  attack  by  the  purchasers,  or  consumers,  to 
lower  the  price,  and  the  competition  between  manufacturers 
for  business,  and  between  work  people  for  work,  leads 
them,  in  the  absence  of  combinations  among  themselves, 
to  seek  business  and  work  by  underbidding  each  other  ; 
and  thus  prices,  profits,  interest  and  wages  all  tend  to 
fall,  to  the  disadvantage  of  manufacturers,  stockholders 
and  working  people  and  to  the  advantage  of  consumers, 

1  Delivered  at  Cooper  Union,  June  1,  1898. 


410  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

who  are  after  all  only  the  manufacturers,  the  stockholders, 
and  the  working  people  themselves  appearing  in  another 
character,  that  is,  as  buyers  of  each  other's  products. 

The  world  of  business  presents  thus  the  curious  spectacle 
of  the  very  same  people  contending  as  producers  to  keep 
up  prices,  wages,  etc.,  and  as  consumers  contending  to 
keep  them  down.  There  is  one  great  difference,  however, 
between  the  two  characters  thus  assumed  by  the  same 
individuals.  As  producers  they  work  in  comparatively 
small  groups,  and  can  agree  together  upon  a  certain  policy 
by  which  they  can  attain  their  object,  while  as  consumers 
they  must  in  the  very  nature  of  things  be  disorganized ; 
and  they  constitute  indeed  only  a  great  machine  which 
sometimes  does  horrible  mischief  without  intending  to, 
and  indeed  against  its  will,  if  it  can  be  said  to  have  a  will, 
certainly  against  the  will  of  its  individual  members. 
The  way  this  machine  works  is  this.  Everyone  by  neces- 
sity purchases  what  he  needs  at  the  lowest  price  he  can 
find.  The  retail  dealers  seeking  business  lower  prices  to 
meet  this  demand  of  the  buyers ;  the  wholesale  dealers 
are  forced,  in  consequence  and  for  the  same  reason,  to 
lower  their  prices;  in  order  to  do  this,  they  must  lower 
the  cost  of  production.  They  have  three  ways  of  accom- 
plishing this.  (1)  They  can  give  up  part  of  their  own 
receipts.  (2)  They  can  diminish  the  interest  on  their 
capital.  (3)  They  can  cut  down  wages.  Of  course  they 
may  also  be  able  to  improve  their  methods,  and  so  diminish 
the  cost  of  production  without  any  of  these  other  steps ; 
and  this  they  often  do  ;  but  I  am  now  concerned  only  with 
the  cases  where  such  improvements  are  not  made. 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    411 

Now,  if  the  working  people  have  made  a  combination 
among  themselves,  if  they  have  a  strong  labor  organi- 
zation, they  can  withstand  the  attack  on  their  wages,  and 
either  force  the  manufacturers  to  put  the  loss  on  the  other 
two  partners  in  the  business,  or  else  they  can  so  strengthen 
the  hands  of  all  the  manufacturers  in  the  trade  that  these 
can  resist  the  tendency  to  lower  prices,  and  so  enable  the 
retail  dealers  to  resist  the  demand  of  the  public,  and  force 
the  consumers  to  pay  a  price  which  will  give  not  only 
a  living  wage,  but  also  the  usual  return  to  capital  and 
a  fair  payment  for  the  management  of  the  business.  This 
was  apparently  what  the  coal  miners  accomplished  in  the 
last  great  coal  strike  in  England.  The  coal  owners  pro- 
posed to  lower  wages,  using  as  an  argument  that  they 
could  not  pay  the  usual  wages  because  they  had  made 
contracts  for  coal  at  certain  low  prices.  The  reply  of  the 
strikers  was  that  they  must  have  a  living  wage  and  that 
the  coal  owners  must  not  make  contracts  which  rendered 
it  impossible  for  them  to  pay  a  living  wage,  for  otherwise 
they,  the  miners,  would  not  mine  the  coal  at  all.  After  a 
contest  of  several  months,  during  which  the  English  people 
supported  the  strikers  in  this  position,  the  latter  carried 
the  day,  and  the  principle  that  workers  are  entitled  to  a 
living  wage,  and  that  business  must  be  so  conducted  as 
to  give  it  to  them,  was  established  in  England. 

Their  success  was  due  primarily,  of  course,  to  their 
strong  trade  union,  and  there  is  no  other  means,  except 
a  trust  among  manufacturers,  which  can  prevent  a  con- 
stant lowering  of  prices  and  wages  from  the  pressure  of 
competition  among  work  people  themselves  underbidding' 


412  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

each  other,  and  among  manufacturers  underbidding  each 
other. 

Having  got  so  far  in  my  attempt  to  show  how,  and  how 
only,  a  Uving  wage  can  be  secured,  it  seems  pertinent  to 
stop  to  inquire  what  a  hving  wage  is. 

A  hving  wage  is  the  sum  per  day  which  any  given 
group  of  working  people  has  agreed  upon,  whether  the 
agreement  be  expressly  made  or  not,  as  the  sum  they  must 
have  to  secure  what  they  have  learned  to  consider  the 
necessaries  of  life,  and  it  varies  according  to  the  stan- 
dard of  living  of  each  group  of  working  people.  What 
is  a  living  wage  to  many  is  a  dying  wage  to  others. 

The  great  object  to  be  striven  for,  both  for  a  nation  as 
a  whole,  and  for  the  individual  working  men  and  women, 
is  that  this  standard  of  living  should  be  constantly  rising, 
in  order  that  the  condition  of  the  people  may  rise  con- 
stantly. It  will  be  a  good  thing  for  the  American  nation 
when  a  piano  and  a  bicycle  are  regarded  as  necessaries 
of  life  by  everybody,  provided  that  the  truth  is  also 
recognized  that  the  necessaries  of  life  are  to  be  earned 
by  honest  hard  work,  and  not  by  gambling  and  cheating, 
whether  on  a  large  scale  on  Wall  Street,  or  on  a  small 
scale  on  Hester  Street. 

One  of  the  great  dangers  which  threaten  this  country 
from  the  influx  of  uneducated  foreigners  is  that  the  stan- 
dard of  living  should  be  lowered  among  us,  and  the  only 
means  we  have  to  counteract  this  danger,  if  we  receive 
them  into  the  country,  is  to  raise  their  standard  by  educa- 
tion, to  develop  them  in  all  directions,  until  they  will  not 
work  for  wages  that  make  a  decent  life  impossible,  until 


WORK  FOR  THE  EMANCIPATION  OF  LABOR    413 

they  will  not  live  in  filthy,  dark  rooms,  until  they  will  not 
let  their  children  go  to  work  when  they  ought  to  be  at 
school,  until  they  will  demand  conditions  suitable  for  self- 
respecting  American  men  and  women. 

Education  is  the  one  means  by  which  the  standard  of 
living  can  be  raised,  education  of  every  kind  —  by  the 
public  schools,  by  the  churches,  by  labor  organizations, 
by  such  institutions  as  this  great  and  beneficent  one  in 
which  we  stand,  founded  by  the  large-hearted  Peter  Cooper 
in  order  that  the  young  men  and  women  of  New  York 
might  have  the  advantages  of  which  he  himself  felt  the 
lack,  when,  a  poor  boy,  he  sought  to  educate  himself. 
This  very  series  of  meetings  is  due  in  part  to  his  public 
spirit,  for  the  hall  is  given  to  the  People's  Institute  in  order 
to  carry  out  Peter  Cooper's  direction  that  instruction 
should  be  given  in  the  Cooper  Union  on  social  and  political 
science,  meaning  thereby  not  merely  the  science  of 
political  economy,  but  the  science  and  philosophy  of  a  just 
and  equitable  form  of  government,  based  upon  the  great 
fundamental  law  that  nations  and  men  should  do  unto 
others  as  they  would  be  done  by. 

We  must  depend,  then,  on  education  to  induce  the 
coming  generations  to  raise  their  standard  of  living,  and 
thus  to  make  their  living  wage  high  enough  to  enable 
them  really  to  live,  that  is,  so  that  their  bodies,  their 
minds,  and  their  souls  may  reach  the  highest  development ; 
and  we  must  depend  on  labor  organizations,  and  organiza- 
tions of  manufacturers  to  resist  the  constant  pressure  of 
the  purchasing  public  to  lower  prices  to  a  point  which 
makes  this  Uving  wage  an  impossibility. 


414  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

When  labor  organizations  and  organizations  of  em- 
ployers act  together  in  joint  boards  of  conciliation,  they 
are,  of  course,  far  more  effective  for  this  purpose  than  when 
the  two  bodies  act  alone,  and  often  in  opposition  to  each 
other.  We  have  in  New  York  City  a  very  good  example 
of  the  good  results  of  one  of  these  joint  boards,  that  of 
the  bricklayers  and  mason  builders,  in  many  directions,, 
among  others,  in  keeping  up  wages  to  a  very  respectable 
point  as  wages  go  —  fifty  cents  an  hour.  I  heard  one  of 
the  Mason  Builders'  Association  say  last  year  :  "Supply 
and  demand  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  wages  of  the 
bricklayers  who  work  for  our  members;  if  there  were- 
two  thousand  bricklayers  looking  for  work  in  New  York 
and  I  wanted  ten  only,  I  should  have  to  pay  the  wages 
fixed  upon  in  our  yearly  agreement.''  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that  on  May  5  of  this  year  the  fifteenth  annual  agree- 
ment was  signed,  and  that  there  has  been  neither  strike 
nor  lockout  between  the  eight  bricklayers'  unions  of  New 
York  and  the  Mason  Builders'  Association  since  1884. 

One  more  point,  and  I  have  done.  It  is  greatly  to  be 
desired  for  every  reason,  moral  and  material,  that  the 
efficiency  of  labor  should  be  increased  ;  and  while  it  is  true 
that  high  wages  are  one  means  of  making  labor  more 
efficient,  it  is  also  true,  and  exactly  as  important,  that 
efficient  labor  makes  high  wages  possible,  while  it  also  de- 
velops and  fosters  the  moral  qualities  without  which  high 
wages  will  be  of  but  very  little  use.  If  labor  organizations 
demand  for  their  members,  as  they  should,  a  fair  day's 
wage,  they  should  also  guarantee  from  their  members 
a  fair  day's  work. 


WORK  FOR  THE   EMANCIPATION   OF   LABOR    415 

Professor  Thorold  Rogers,  in  his  great  book  on  "Work 
and  Wages," — that  splendid  plea  for  an  adequate  living 
wage, — says  in  closing  his  Chapter  XIV  (and  I  will  close 
also  with  this  quotation) : 

"The  joint  action  of  working  men  is  only  in  its  infancy 
yet.  As  association  becomes  wider  and  more  coalescent^ 
many  steps  which  have  not  yet  been  taken  will  become 
natural  and  easy;  as,  for  instance,  the  maintenance  of 
a  standard  of  honor  and  efficiency  in  work,  and  the  protec- 
tion of  the  public  against  the  roguery  of  producers,  of 
which  at  present  workmen  are  the  silent  witnesses,  but 
should  not  be  the  willing  accomplices.  I  know  nothing 
which  would  exalt  the  reputation  and  justify  the  action 
of  trade  combinations  more  than  the  establishment  of  a 
rule  that  members  of  such  unions  should  denounce  and 
expose  dishonest  and  scambling  work,  and  protect  those 
of  their  order  who  may  suffer  ill  usage  for  having  re- 
ported and  checked  such  nefarious  practices. 

"As  yet  the  rules  of  trade  unions  are  principally  con- 
fined to  the  process  of  bettering  the  whole  class.  Here- 
after they  will  or  should  extend  toward  purifying  the  class 
and  making  it  a  potent  instrument  for  the  moral  and 
material  advancement  of  all.  Other  professions  exclude, 
either  formally  or  informally,  misbehaving,  disreputable 
or  incompetent  persons  from  their  ranks.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  in  time  to  come  artisans  and  laborers  will 
elaborate  the  necessary  regulations,  by  which  they  will 
increase  the  usefulness,  elevate  the  reputation  and  culti- 
vate the  moral  tone  of  those  who  ply  the  craft  whose  in- 
terests they  seek  to  serve,  and  whose  character  they  ought 
scrupulously  to  maintain." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

The  Woman's   Municipal   League  of  the    City  of 

New  York 

Early  in  September,  1894,  an  organized  movement  was 
begun  to  overthrow  the  municipal  control  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  long  exercised  by  Tammany  Hall,  and  shown 
by  the  recent  exposures  of  the  Lexow  Committee  Ho  be  both 
corrupt  and  criminal.  In  this  movement  the  Rev.  Charles 
H.  Parkhurst  was  a  prominent  leader,  and  the  organiza- 
tion took  the  form  of  a  non-partisan  Committee  of 
Seventy,  pledged  to  a  campaign  for  the  honest,  economi- 
cal, and  businesslike  administration  of  municipal  affairs 
without  regard  to  national  or  State  politics.  William  L. 
Strong  2  was  selected  as  the  candidate  for  Mayor,  and 
numerous  reform  clubs  and  other  auxiliaries  sprang  into 
being  to  lend  their  aid.  Among  these  was  the  Woman's 
Municipal  League,  which  was  organized  early  in  October 
by  Mrs.  Lowell,  in  response  to  the  appeal  of  Dr.  Park- 
hurst.    The  evidence  brought  out  by  the  Lexow  Com- 

1  Hon.  Clarence  Lexow,  Senator  from  the  Sixteenth  District,  offered 
a  resolution,  January  29,  1894,  for  the  appointment  of  a  committee 
to  investigate  the  Police  Department  of  New  York  City,  of  which 
committee  he  became  Chairman. 

2  Mr.  Strong  was  elected  Mayor,  November  6,  1894,  receiving 
154,094  votes  against  108,907  cast  for  Hugh  J.  Grant,  the  Tammany 
candidate. 

416 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE  417 

mittee  had  made  plain  not  only  the  protection  of  immo- 
rality by  the  police,  but  also  a  systematized  traffic  in  vice, 
in  which  women  were  the  helpless  victims.  In  their  behalf, 
the  help  of  the  women  of  the  community  was  therefore 
invoked.  The  general  plan  of  action  was  to  hold  meetings 
of  women  both  uptown  and  downtown,  to  be  addressed 
by  women;  and  the  League  also  arranged  for  a  mass 
meeting  of  men  and  women  at  Cooper  Union,  which  was 
addressed  by  prominent  citizens,  including  Dr.  Parkhurst, 
Henry  George,  Seth  Low,  and  Charles  S.  Fairchild. 

After  the  victory  of  the  municipal  reform  movement  of 
1894,  the  League  became  inactive  and  practically  dis- 
banded, but  it  was  revived  in  1897  to  aid  the  Citizens' 
Union  in  its  contest  of  that  year  for  a  non-partisan  city 
government,  and  has  since  maintained  its  organization.^ 
The  constitution  adopted  in  March,  1898,  declares  as  the 
object  of  the  League :  ''To  secure  active  support  for  such 
movements  and  candidates  as  may  give  promise  of  the  best 
government  for  the  city,  without  regard  to  party  lines." 

During  the  administration  of  Mayor  Van  Wyck,  vice 
again  became  so  notorious  in  the  city  that  Mrs.  Lowell  re- 
entered the  field  at  the  head  of  the  League  in  the  interest 
of  reform.  In  this  municipal  campaign,  which  resulted 
in  the  election  of  Seth  Low  as  Mayor, ^  effective  use  was 
made,  by  sending  a  copy  to  every  voter,  of  a  pamphlet 
by  Bishop  Potter,  entitled  ''Facts  for  Fathers  and 
Mothers,"  in  which  he  showed  how  the  lack  of  police 
protection  and  the  venality  of  the  police  courts  were  in- 

*  In  1910,  under  the  presidency  of  Mrs.  Edward  Ringwood  Hewitt. 
2  Mayor  Low  was  elected  in  1901  on  a  fusion  ticket. 

2e 


418  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

juring  the  home.  Mrs.  LowelFs  active  work  as  Secretary 
of  the  League  was  terminated  because  of  impaired  health 
in  1902.  The  League  pubhshes  a  monthly  Bulletin  in 
which  prominent  mention  is  made  that  it  was  ^'Founded 
1897  by  Mrs.  Charles  Russell  Lowell' ' ;  it  has  its  head- 
quarters at  46  East  Twenty-ninth  Street.  The  present 
purpose  of  its  members  is  to  devote  the  energies  of  the 
League  between  elections  to  developing  among  women  an 
increasing  interest  in  the  government  of  the  city.  It  is  the 
belief  of  the  League  that  what  is  needed  to  secure  good 
government  is  a  comprehension  by  the  people  of  its  direct 
bearing  upon  their  own  health,  happiness,  and  moral  wel- 
fare, and  also  of  the  impossibility  of  securing  good  govern- 
ment unless  the  business  of  the  city  is  put  into  the  hands 
of  experts.  If  the  work  of  the  city  departments  can  be 
presented  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  its  complexity  and 
difficulty  understood  by  the  people,  they  cannot  fail  in 
the  course  of  time  to  demand  that  this  work  shall  be  con- 
fided to  persons  fitted  by  character  and  education  to  per- 
form it,  and  that  it  shall  not  be  given  out  as  spoils  at  the 
expense  of  the  interests  of  the  public. 

The  plans  for  this  work  of  education  have  not  yet  been 
perfected,  but  in  general  they  are  to  take  advantage  of 
existing  associations  of  various  kinds,  which  already  hold 
meetings  for  social  and  educational  piu'poses,  and  to  offer 
to  present  at  such  meetings  matters  connected  with  the 
government  of  the  city,  as,  for  example,  by  illustrated 
lectures  on  the  various  city  departments,  talks  upon  civil 
service  reform,  or  upon  such  other  kindred  subjects  as  may 
seem  appropriate  to  the  special  audience  addressed. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         419 

Mrs.  Lowell  contributed  a  history  of  the  League  to 
Municipal  Affairs  for  September,  1898,  and  her  helpful 
pen  brought  aid,  through  the  League,  to  the  cause  of 
municipal  reform  in  the  campaign  of  1903  in  the  two  able 
letters  which  follow. 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  Woman's  Municipal  League 
Bulletin  :  ^ 

I  congratulate  you  sincerely  on  your  exposure  of  the 
fallacy  that  Tammany  cannot  be  beaten  twice  in  suc- 
cession. The  statistics  given  by  you  in  your  September 
issue  prove  that  New  York  has  shown  itself  in  the  last 
three  mayoralty  elections  to  be  an  anti-Tammany  city, 
and  this  fact  should  be  repeated  over  and  over  again 
from  now  until  November  3,  in  order  that  all  the  time- 
servers  who  desire  above  all  things  to  be  on  the  winning 
side  may  fully  understand  that  in  voting  the  Tammany 
ticket  they  are  putting  themselves  on  the  side  of  a  hopeless 
minority. 

I  congratulate  the  League  also  upon  its  intention  to 
appeal  to  the  indifferent  to  register,  and  above  all,  to  vote 
after  having  registered.  Such  appeals  will  affect  many. 
Individual  women,  however,  can  do  more  by  reminding 
the  men  with  whom  they  have  influence  of  the  great  issues 
at  stake  in  the  coming  election,  and  begging  them  to  do 
their  duty  as  citizens  of  no  mean  city.  We  have  now, 
as  Mr.  Jerome  has  truly  said,  an  administration  of  city 
affairs  far  better  than  any  that  New  York  has  ever  known, 
and,  as  he  might  have  added  with  equal  truth,  far  better 
than  that  of  almost  any  other  city  in  the  country ;  and  it 
behooves  all  good  citizens  to  give  the  Mayor  who  has  done 
us  this  great  service  the  opportunity  to  continue,  to  im- 

*  From  the  Woman' a  Municipal  League  Bulletin^  October,  1903. 


420  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

prove,    and   to   perfect   his   work,   which    is    but    just 
begun. 

For  the  sake  especially  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
helpless  people  living  in  our  crowded  tenement  districts, 
those  who  have  votes  should  feel  it  a  sacred  duty  to  con- 
tinue the  present  administration  in  power.  To  the  well- 
to-do  it  is  of  little  personal  moment  what  sort  of  city 
government  we  have.  A  man  with  money  can  make  him- 
self quite  comfortable  under  any  kind  of  administration, 
provided  he  has  no  care  for  the  good  name  of  his  city,  and 
no  sympathy  for  his  suffering  fellow-citizens. 

If  the  water  supply  gives  out  or  becomes  polluted,  the 
well-to-do  can  buy  plenty  of  pure  water ;  if  the  streets 
they  live  on  are  filthy,  they  can  hire  men  to  clean  them ; 
a  bad  police  force  never  troubles  the  rich ;  their  food  is  not 
adulterated;  they  need  no  Health  Department  to  save 
them  from  disease;  their  houses  are  not  invaded  by 
prostitutes ;  they  can  get  fresh  air  and  sunlight  without 
the  help  of  the  Tenement  House  Department ;  the  Fire  De- 
partment is  not  their  only  protection  against  being  burned 
in  their  beds ;  their  children  are  educated  whatever  may 
be  the  condition  of  the  public  schools ;  if  a  pestilence  of 
typhus  fever  or  cholera  threatens  the  city,  they  with  their 
families,  can  leave  it. 

Far  otherwise  is  it  with  the  mass  of  tenement  house 
dwellers.  They  are  dependent  for  everything  that  makes 
life  bearable,  for  everything  that  makes  life  possible,  upon 
upright,  intelligent  and  devoted  city  officials. 

Let  women  realize  this,  and  let  them  appeal  to  the  voters 
to  register  and  to  vote  for  the  sake  of  these  helpless  people 
who  live  so  near  to  us,  but  yet  whose  lives  are  so  cruelly 
different  from  ours. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

September  10,  1903. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         421 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  Woman^s  Municipal  League 
Bulletin  :  ^ 

Last  week  a  young  girl  came  into  the  office  of  the 
Woman's  Municipal  League,  and  asked  to  see  one  of  the 
ladies  there  alone.  She  had  evidently  been  pretty  once, 
but  now,  in  her  shabby-gay  clothes,  she  had  lost  most 
of  her  beauty,  with  her  youth  and  her  health.  She  had 
come  to  beg  the  Woman's  League  to  reprint  the  pamphlet 
entitled  ^^  Facts  for  Fathers  and  Mothers.'^  She  was  told 
that  it  was  not  regarded  as  wise  to  reprint  this  pamphlet. 
She  then  told  her  story. 

She  had  dearly  loved  the  man  she  married,  but  a  few 
days  after  the  wedding  he  had  placed  her  in  a  disorderly 
house.  She  was  kept  there  five  months,  and  she  was  never 
allowed  to  go  out.  Once  she  got  where  she  could  call  a 
policeman,  but  he  passed  along  without  paying  any  atten- 
tion to  her.  Finally,  she  grew  so  ill  that  they  let  her  go. 
Her  health  shattered,  she  had  tried  to  earn  money,  but  had 
failed  everywhere  except  on  the  street.  '^I  have  come,*' 
she  said,  'Ho  save  other  girls.  If  Tammany  gets  back, 
there  will  be  a  lot  more  of  us  out  there.*'  She  was  asked 
if  she  would  not  give  her  name  so  that  the  officers  of  the 
Woman's  Municipal  League  might  try  to  help  her.  ''I 
have  no  name,  and  you'll  never  see  me  again.  There's 
nothing  you  can  do  for  me,"  she  said,  and  with  that  she 
left.     To-night  she  is  out  on  the  street. 

It  may  or  may  not  be  wise  to  reprint  the  pamphlet, 
*^ Facts  for  Fathers  and  Mothers,"  but  must  we  not  face 
the  question  of  whether  we,  by  our  indifference,  are  not 
risking  the  return  of  this  awful  collusion  between  the  police 
and  vice  ?  One  can  help  by  giving  his  time  and  strength, 
or  by  sending  money  to  R.  Fulton  Cutting,  the  Citizens' 

^  From  the  Woman's  Municipal  League  Bulletin^  November,  1903. 


422  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Union,  18  East  Sixteenth  Street.  Will  not  the  man  or 
woman  who  reads  this  letter  follow  this  poor  woman's 
lead,  and  help  to  save  the  other  girls? 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 
New  York,  October  17,  1903. 

What  can  Young  Men  do  for  the  City^ 

Looking  back  through  history,  up  to  a  very  late  time, 
cities  are  by  far  the  most  important  political  divisions  ; 
indeed,  one  hears  very  little  of  nations  until  after  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  was  in  the  cities  of  the  world  that  all  the  in- 
telligence and  power  were  collected,  and  it  was  the  cities 
that  controlled  the  world.  How  many  great  and  wonder- 
ful cities  have  grown  up,  fought,  conquered,  flourished 
and  been  destroyed  within  only  four  thousand  years. 
Babylon  with  her  marvellous  walls  and  hanging  gardens 
is  now  only  a  name.  Thebes  was  built  and  destroyed 
before  the  beginning  of  history,  and  the  story  of  her  mag- 
nificence is  so  marvellous  that  it  was  supposed  to  be  a  myth 
until  the  mighty  remains  of  her  hundred  gates,  her  colossal 
temples  and  statues,  buried  for  thousands  of  years  by  the 
sands  of  the  Egyptian  desert,  have  in  our  own  century 
proved  the  truth  of  the  old  traditions  of  her  glory. 

Memphis  took  the  place  of  Thebes,  and  stretched  for 
eight  miles  on  each  bank  of  the  Nile.  Her  ruins  are  now 
almost  lost,  but  in  the  twelfth  century  were  described  as 
still,  after  four  thousand  years  of  decay,  holding  ''works 
so  wonderful  as  the  most  eloquent  could  not  describe. '^ 

Sparta,  forever  associated  with  the  great  name  of 
1  Dated  March  28.  1898. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         423 

•Leonidas  and  his  three  hundred,  who  held  the  pass  of 
Thermopylae  against  the  hosts  of  Persia,  and  though 
defeated  saved  the  whole  of  Greece,  is  now  lost. 

How  many  cities  have  been  great  which  now  are  small ! 
Athens  with  her  wonders  of  art,  her  statues,  her  temples, 
all  more  beautiful  than  any  that  man  has  since  created, 
with  her  tragedians,  and  her  philosophers,  to  whom  the 
world  of  letters  still  turns  for  inspiration  —  that  marvel  of 
the  world,  that  little  city  which  in  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  produced  more  great  men,  men  great  in  every 
direction,  than  any  other  country  in  a  like  period,  has 
since  shrunk  into  insignificance. 

Jerusalem,  with  her  magnificent  temple,  Jerusalem, 
the  scene  of  the  event  which  has  had  more  influence  on 
human  history  than  any  other  since  history  began,  what 
is  she  now  ? 

Rome,  the  Mistress  of  the  World,  through  her  great 
martial  force  and  her  power  of  organization,  with  such 
a  genius  of  government  that  Roman  Law  is  the  foundation 
of  the  Law  under  which  the  civiUzed  world  still  lives, 
what  influence  has  the  present  Rome  ? 

Alexandria,  built  by  Alexander  the  Great,  for  hundreds 
of  years  leading  the  world  in  learning,  with  her  great 
schools  and  her  Library,  one  of  the  seven  wonders  of  the 
world,  three  times  destroyed  by  ignorant  barbarians, 
three  times  again  filled  with  the  treasures  of  the  literature 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  do  we  even  hear  the  name  of 
Alexandria  now  ? 

Constantinople,  built  by  that  wonderful  man  Constan- 
tine  the  Great  to  be  the  capital  of  the   earth,   from 


424  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

which  he  governed  the  world  and  the  church,  righting* 
ancient  wrongs,  dispensing  justice  to  the  poor,  and  even  to 
men  cast  into  prison  as  criminals;  issuing  a  decree 
permitting  complaints  to  be  made  against  his  officers,  and 
promising  redress  if  they  were  found  to  have  inflicted 
wrongs ;  diminishing  taxes  with  one  hand  and  encouraging 
science  and  the  arts  and  religion  with  the  other ;  what 
is  Constantinople  now  but  the  seat  of  the  worst  despotism 
that  disgraces  the  world  ? 

But,  although  the  glory  and  the  power  of  these  cities 
and  of  many  lesser  cities  have  passed,  yet  to  them  man- 
kind owes  its  civilization. 

In  the  beginning  men  roamed  over  vast  tracts  of  lands 
as  nomads,  following  their  flocks  and  herds  from  pasture 
to  pasture ;  then  a  few  weaker  families,  needing  protec- 
tion against  more  powerful  clans,  settled  in  one  spot,  and 
they  built  walls  around  their  rude  huts  to  prevent  the 
inroads  of  the  wandering  tribes.  Then  arose  in  the  cities 
division  of  labor  and  the  refinements  of  social  intercourse ; 
laws  were  required  to  decide  between  the  conflicting  inter- 
ests of  many  people  living  so  close  together;  and  then 
patriotism,  the  love  of  the  city,  was  developed  from  the 
sense  of  the  advantages  enjoyed,  and  of  the  exertions 
required  to  preserve  them.  And  so  came  civilization  and 
political  government,  the  very  names  of  which  explain  their 
origin.  Civilization,  from  dvis,  Latin  for  a  citizen,  means 
the  city-fying  of  a  people.  Political,  from  polisj  Greek 
for  city,  means  only  city-fied  government.  By  the  way, 
civil  and  politey  polished  and  urbane^  all  words  describing 
pleasing  manners  and  meaning  only  city-fied,  show  how 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE  425 

the  city  people  developed  beyond  the  heathen  of  the 
country,  the  dwellers  on  the  heaths,  in  all  that  makes 
men  agreeable  and  pleasant,  as  well  as  in  the  arts  of 
civilization. 

But  mankind  owes  more  than  civilization  itself  to 
cities ;  it  owes  to  them  the  principles  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty,  the  great  birthright  of  mankind  from  which  it  has 
so  long  been  shut  out,  but  for  which  cities  have  for  many 
hundreds  of  years  contended. 

In  antiquity,  even,  the  rise  of  cities  was  the  most  im- 
portant source  of  republicanism,  especially  in  Greece  and 
Italy,  and  in  the  turmoils  and  contests  for  the  city  govern- 
ment were  developed  the  great  qualities  which  made  the 
cities  so  powerful.  Athens  and  Sparta  and  Rome  were 
great  because  their  citizens  were  great,  and  their  citizens 
were  great  because  they  were  citizens  and  not  slaves. 

In  the  Middle  Ages,  the  cities  of  Italy  and  of  Germany 
were  so  many  fierce  republics,  fighting  with  each  other, 
fighting  against  popes,  emperors,  kings  and  princes,  inde- 
pendent, self-governing,  developing  citizens  whose  names 
and  works  are  still  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  man- 
kind. 

In  Germany  the  cities  strengthened  themselves  to  resist 
the  assaults  of  the  feudal  lords,  and  finally  made  common 
cause;  and  in  1239  Hamburg,  Lubeck  and  Bnmswick 
formed  the  Hansa  or  League,  called  in  English  the 
Hanseatic  League,  to  protect  themselves  from  pillage,  to 
extend  their  commerce,  to  prevent  injustice,  and  to  main- 
tain their  rights ;  and  at  one  time  there  were  eighty-five 
cities  in  the  League;   and  from  them,  and  from  other 


426  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

less  well-known  leagues,  wealth,  industry,  knowledge,  and 
equal  laws  spread  through  the  nations  of  Europe. 

In  Italy,  meanwhile,  the  great  republican  cities,  Milan, 
Genoa,  Florence,  Perugia,  Pisa,  Lucca,  and  others,  also 
held  their  own  against  popes  and  princes  who  longed  to 
conquer  them;  they  were  fierce,  fighting  cities;  the3^ 
struggled  with  each  other  as  well  as  with  their  would-be 
oppressors,  and  they  produced  wild  fighting  men,  and  great 
painters,  and  marvellous  architects,  and  intellectual  giants, 
and  mighty  preachers,  and  saints,  all  in  rich  profusion, 
men  who  created  pictures,  statues,  cathedrals,  which  still 
draw  thousands  of  pilgrims  to  Italy  yearly  to  gaze  in  awe 
and  wondering  admiration  at  these  treasures  of  peaceful  and 
beautiful  art  produced  in  the  midst  of  turbulent  times. 

But  with  the  development  of  luxury  and  self-indulgence 
in  the  cities,  the  citizens  became  unwilling  to  exert  them- 
selves to  defend  their  liberties.  Single  families  grew 
rich,  and  with  their  money  they  corrupted  the  people, 
and  gradually,  both  in  the  German  and  in  the  Italian 
cities,  the  repubhcan  form  of  government  vanished;  the 
rich  families  in  Italy  and  the  provinces  of  Germany,  with 
the  consent  of  the  people,  destroyed  their  liberty,  and 
with  their  liberty  they  lost  their  greatness.  The  excite- 
ment of  the  public  life  and  the  greatness  of  the  public 
interests  had  developed  men^s  minds  and  characters, 
but  when  they  were  governed  from  outside,  when  public 
affairs  were  no  longer  their  business,  they  shrank  in  body 
and  in  soul,  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte  found  them  an 
easy  prey  when  he  built  up  modern  Europe  and  gave  the 
finishing  blow  to  the  free  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         427 

But  though  the  age  of  the  ancient  free  cities  and  of  the 
free  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages  has  passed,  we  in  this 
modern  time  and  in  this  modern  world  are  entering  upon 
a  new  age  of  mighty  cities,  cities  mighty  in  numbers  and 
in  wealth,  and  which  will  be  mighty  in  spirit  and  in 
power,  if  their  citizens  are  worthy.  The  fierce,  fighting 
little  cities  are  no  longer  the  champions  of  freedom; 
civilization  and  civility  are  no  longer  to  be  found  only 
within  walled  towns ;  but  our  cities  are  of  tremendous 
importance,  nevertheless,  because  of  the  great  masses  of 
people  congregated  within  them.  In  the  United  States  it 
will  be  very  soon  true,  if  it  is  not  so  now,  that  half 
the  population  is  living  in  cities,  and  the  condition  and 
life  of  these  cities  is  therefore  of  vital  importance  from 
two  points  of  view.  First,  because  the  welfare  of  so 
many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  is  involved ;  and 
second,  because  if  the  majority  of  the  people  of  the  country 
are  residents  of  cities,  then  the  cities  will  control  the  nation, 
and  the  nation  will  be  what  the  cities  are.  Thus  both 
local  patriotism  and  national  patriotism  must  be  aroused 
by  an  appeal  in  behalf  of  the  welfare  of  our  great  city, 
just  entering  on  its  new  life. 

Few  people  realize  how  helpless  the  inhabitants  of  a 
city  are  to  secure  their  own  well-being  except  by  placing  the 
management  of  public  business  in  the  hands  of  competent 
and  honest  men.  In  the  country  a  family  can  control  its 
own  life  and  secure  its  own  comfort.  It  makes  but  little 
difference  to  a  country  family  whether  the  pubUc  affairs  are 
well  or  ill-managed.  No  matter  how  stupid  or  corrupt 
may  be  the  supervisors  of  a  countj^,  the  individual  residents 


428  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

can  lead  healthy  and  happy  lives,  and  usually  the  only  evil 
that  will  touch  them  at  all  nearly,  will  be  a  slight  increase 
in  their  taxes.  They  can  have  fresh  water,  fresh  air  and 
good  food,  and  every  year  they  have  a  chance  to  change 
the  men  who  are  cheating  them  if  they  choose.  But  it  is 
not  so  in  the  city ;  the  comfort,  the  health,  the  life,  and, 
to  a  great  extent,  even  the  character  of  the  people  of  a 
city,  depend  upon  the  kind  of  men  who  have  control  of  the 
public  affairs. 

Consider  how  vital  to  city  people  is  a  supply  of  pure 
water,  and  how  helpless  they  are  to  get  it  for  themselves. 
An  insufficient  supply  of  water  means  constant  discomfort 
and  trouble ;  bad  water  means  disease  and  death.  Thou- 
sands of  people  die  every  year  in  Philadelphia  and  in 
other  cities  of  the  United  States  from  typhoid  fever, 
because  they  have  bad  water  to  drink,  and  they  have  bad 
water  to  drink  because  their  city  officers  are  corrupt  and 
ignorant,  and  do  not  care  and  do  not  know  how  to  get  a 
supply  of  good  water.  Think  of  the  awful  suffering  from 
disease  and  death,  the  loss  of  wages,  the  widows  and 
children  left  helpless,  that  come  to  the  people  of  those 
cities  because  they  place  the  care  of  their  public  affairs  in 
the  hands  of  men  who  may  be  good  Republicans  or  good 
Democrats,  but  who  are  not  good  men  and  good  engineers. 

Consider  again  the  helplessness  of  city  people  to  protect 
their  health  against  the  evils  that  come  from  dirt  of  all 
kinds,  dirty  streets  and  foul  houses,  and  from  bad  food ; 
suffering,  disease  and  death  in  its  most  fearful  forms, 
small-pox,  typhus  fever,  cholera,  yellow  fever,  the  plague. 
These  are  the  things  that  afflict  cities  that  have  ignorant 


THE   WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         429 

and  corrupt  men  at  the  head  of  their  affairs,  and  these  are 
the  things  which  are  entirely  banished  from  cities  whose 
business  is  managed  by  men  of  intelhgence  and  honest 
devotion  to  the  pubhc  good. 

Passing  over  many  other  matters  which  affect  the  comfort 
and  happiness  of  the  residents  of  a  city,  but  which  the 
individuals  cannot  themselves  control  from  day  to  day, 
let  us  for  a  few  moments  consider  the  tremendous  influence 
the  schools  have  upon  the  welfare  of  a  city.  If  the  schools 
are  of  the  right  kind,  and  teach  the  children  what  they 
ought  to  know,  and  if  there  are  enough  schools  so  that  all 
children  can  have  the  advantages  they  offer,  then  the 
citizens  will  be  noble,  upright,  intelligent  men  and  women, 
taking  care  of  themselves  and  their  children,  doing  their 
duty,  good,  prosperous  and  happy.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  schools  are  bad,  or  if  there  are  not  enough 
schools,  then  the  city  will  have  many  poor,  miserable, 
incompetent,  inefficient  citizens,  and  there  will  be  much 
unhappiness  and  wickedness.  Yet  how  helpless  are  the 
people  of  the  city  to  influence  the  schools,  except  by 
choosing  disinterested,  honest,  honorable,  intelligent  men 
to  manage  them. 

If,  then,  as  is  the  undoubted  truth,  the  health,  happiness 
and  moral  welfare  of  the  people  of  a  city  depend  upon  the 
kind  of  men  to  whom  is  entrusted  the  control  of  the  city 
government,  how  mighty  is  the  responsibility  of  the  voters 
of  a  city  for  the  use  of  the  power  put  into  their  hands  on 
Election  Day !  Oh  young  men  !  Upon  you  and  your 
fellows  depends  the  future  of  this  great  city  and  the  wel- 
fare of  her  three  milhon  people,  more  than  two  milhon 


430  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

of  them  women  and  children  whose  very  helplessness 
should  be  their  strongest  appeal  to  you  to  protect  them, 
and  to  give  them  the  health  and  happiness  that  they 
cannot  have  if  you  do  not  do  your  duty  as  good  citizens. 

But  even  more  imperative  than  the  duty  we  owe  to  our 
fellow-citizens  in  this  great  city  is  the  duty  we  owe  to  our 
country  and  to  the  world.  Even  more  inspiring  than  the 
cry  of  the  three  million  people  of  New  York  for  protection 
is  the  cry  of  mankind  that  we  shall  not  allow  their  hopes 
for  a  larger  and  nobler  life  to  be  blighted. 

All  through  history  there  has  been  but  one  great  cause 
in  human  affairs, — the  cause  of  liberty.  In  a  thousand 
contests  mankind  has  struggled  for  more  liberty ;  under 
a  thousand  names  the  fight  has  been  waged.  There  have 
always  been  two  parties  in  history,  the  party  that  stands 
for  freedom  and  the  party  that  stands  for  despotism. 

The  object  of  human  government  is  to  secure  liberty, 
for  the  end  of  government  is  the  improvement  of  the 
race,  and  the  race  cannot  grow  without  the  liberty  which 
gives  to  individuals  the  free  use  of  their  faculties.  There- 
fore liberty  is  the  condition  of  human  progress,  and  liberty 
is  the  worthy  cause  for  which  all  the  great  sacrifices  of 
history  have  been  made. 

This  country  sprang  from  the  love  of  liberty  combined 
with  the  ability  to  organize  liberty  into  institutions, 
America  was  the  protest  against  the  spirit  of  despotism. 
Democracy  is  the  putting  into  government  the  principle  of 
the  brotherhood  of  man.  "All  men  are  bom  free  and 
equal"  are  the  words  upon  which  the  government  of 
America  is  founded.    When  these  words  were  written  in 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         431 

July,  1776,  they  were  a  new  declaration  in  politics.  Reli- 
gious liberty  had  been  asserted  and  was  making  progress, 
but  political  liberty  for  all  men  was  a  revolutionary 
thought.  Americans  declared  it  and  they  fought  and  died 
to  establish  it.  They  carried  on  their  revolution  through 
seven  years  to  defend  their  right  to  liberty,  and  they 
conquered,  and  established  the  United  States  government. 

Our  country  led  the  whole  world  in  this  declaration, 
and  it  opened  the  new  path  to  the  hopeless  races  of  Eu- 
rope. The  down-trodden  and  suffering  people  of  the  old 
country  took  hope  from  our  words  and  from  our  deeds. 
This  was  our  first  great  service  to  liberty ;  but  eighty 
years  later  we  again  spent  lives  and  treasure  for  liberty, 
this  time  for  the  liberty,  not  of  ourselves,  but  of  a  cruelly 
tortured  race,  crushed  to  the  earth  by  our  own  people. 
The  sin  of  slavery  had  darkened  all  our  land  and  threatened 
to  destroy  our  nation,  and  we  fought  and  conquered  a  sec- 
ond time,  and  stood  before  the  world  as  real  believers  in 
liberty  for  aU  men,  for  black  men  as  well  as  for  white 
men. 

This  country,  then,  has  been  the  hope  of  all  nations ; 
the  lovers  of  liberty  have  looked  to  this  country  from  all 
over  the  world  for  inspiration  in  their  struggle ;  they  have 
appealed  to  our  success  to  confound  the  advocates  of 
despotism. 

But,  alas  !  we,  we,  the  people  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
have  failed  the  lovers  of  liberty.  Our  city,  with  its  in- 
competent and  corrupt  government,  instead  of  standing 
as  an  example  to  the  peoples  of  Em-ope,  instead  of 
inspiring  the  men  who  are  seeking  to  estabUsh  the  forms 


432  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  popular  government  in  the  old  countries,  has  become  a 
shameful  warning,  and  when  in  other  countries  men  desire 
to  prevent  the  spread  of  democratic  government,  when 
they  desire  to  preserve  old  forms,  they  point  to  us  and 
say:  '' Beware!  or  our  city  will  become  a  second  New 
York!'' 

And  not  only  does  our  neglect  of  our  duties  to  our 
fellow-citizens  thus  dishearten  the  lovers  of  hberty  all 
over  the  world.  There  is  danger,  as  our  cities,  this  city 
and  other  cities,  come  to  control  the  country  more  and 
more  that,  having  surrendered  our  civic  liberties,  we  shall 
surrender  our  national  liberties,  and  the  United  States 
of  America  will  sink  back  and  lose  its  proud  position  as 
leader  in  the  progress  of  the  world  and  as  the  vanguard  of 
liberty. 

Do  you  ask  me  what  I  mean  by  losing  our  hberties? 
I  mean  putting  the  government  of  our  city  and  of  our 
country  into  the  hands  of  selfish  and  self-seeking  men  at  the 
direction  of  party  bosses,  whether  they  be  of  one  party  or 
the  other.  Men  must  either  be  free  men  or  they  must  be 
slaves.  To  be  free  men  they  must  have  their  own  opinions 
and  must  follow  them ;  they  must  not  go  to  the  primary 
and  go  to  the  polls  and  vote  as  some  one  else  has  told  them 
to.  They  must  vote  according  to  their  own  consciences, 
according  to  what  they  think  is  right,  right  for  the  city ; 
only  if  they  do  this  are  they  free  men  ;  only  if  they  do  this 
will  they  have  a  free  government;  only  if  they  do  this 
will  the  country  continue  to  be  a  free  country.  If  men 
vote  because  they  are  paid  to  vote,  or  because  they  want  an 
office,  or  because  their  employer  tells  them  to  vote  as  he 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         433 

does,  or  because  their  friend  asks  them  to  vote  as  he  does, — 
then  they  are  slaves,  and  though  the  government  continues 
to  be  democratic  in  name,  it  is  actually  a  despotic  govern- 
ment. 

If  we  hope  to  preserve  our  nation,  it  must  be  by  re- 
awakening the  spirit  of  liberty  in  our  people ;  and  that 
spirit  must  be  exercised  in  our  local  affairs,  because  they 
are  the  affairs  with  which  we  have  to  do  from  day  to  day, 
and  the  affairs  which  influence  us  most  and  which  we  can 
most  influence. 

And  what  are  these  affairs,  and  how  can  we  influence 
them?  Let  us  consider  some  of  them.  Take  first  that 
which  concerns  the  health  and  comfort  of  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  city  every  day  —  the  cleaning  of 
the  streets.  If  you  are  good  citizens,  citizens  who 
love  our  city  and  care  for  her  welfare,  you  should  watch 
that  the  men  whom  the  city  pays  to  clean  the  streets, 
and  to  carry  away  the  garbage,  do  the  work  they  are  paid 
to  do,  and  do  it  well.  It  is  good  for  them,  as  well  as  good 
for  us,  that  they  should  be  self-respecting,  honest  work- 
men, and  it  will  help  them  to  be  so  if  they  are  watched,  and 
encouraged  when  they  do  well,  and  remonstrated  with 
when  they  do  badly.  If  you  are  good  citizens  you  should 
watch  the  course  of  the  judges  and  see  that  the  poor  and 
friendless,  who  cannot  protect  and  defend  themselves,  are 
not  oppressed,  and  that  justice  is  done.  You  should 
know  how  the  prisoners  are  treated  in  the  prisons,  and 
how  the  men  and  women  arrested  and  awaiting  trial  are 
treated  in  the  station  houses. 

If  you  are  good  citizens,  you  should  know  how  the  poor 
2p 


434  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

people  in  the  institutions  of  the  citj'-,  inithe  almshouses, 
the  hospitals  and  the  asylums,  are  cared  for,  and  know 
whether  they  have  enough  food  and  kind  care  and  tender 
nursing. 

If  you  are  good  citizens,  you  should  care  about  the 
public  schools  and  know  whether  they  are  good  and  whether 
there  are  enough  of  them,  or  whether  there  are  children  in 
the  city  who  are  being  deprived  of  the  teaching  which 
will  make  the  difference  to  them  between  success  and 
failure  in  life. 

If  you  are  good  citizens,  you  should  care  to  have  the 
laws  enforced,  and  you  should  learn  what  the  laws  are,  so 
that  you  may  help  to  enforce  them.  The  voters  elect  the 
members  of  the  Legislature  who  make  the  laws,  and  the 
voters  ought  to  know  what  their  representatives  are 
doing,  and  support  them  if  they  do  right  and  condemn 
them  if  they  do  wrong. 

If  yoa  are  good  citizens,  you  should  join  in  the  move- 
ments to  get  playgrounds  and  parks  and  public  baths  and 
public  libraries,  and  all  the  things  that  are  needed  to  make 
the  lives  of  the  people  of  the  city  happy  and  healthy  and 
noble  and  good,  and  you  should  demand  of  the  men  elected 
to  office  that  they  provide  the  city  with  all  these  things. 

Above  all,  if  you  would  be  good  citizens,  you  must  use 
your  own  intelligence,  your  own  judgment,  your  own 
conscience,  in  regard  to  all  these  vital  matters.  Every 
American  voter  owes  it  to  his  country  to  educate  himself 
to  understand  public  affairs,  and  the  more  he  studies 
them,  the  more  intelhgent  he  will  grow,  and,  as  I  have 
said,  it  is  these  local  affairs  which  are  the  most  important 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL   LEAGUE         435 

to  us,  for  those  are  the  affairs  that  are  nearest  at  hand 
and  which  influence  us  most  and  for  which  all  citizens, 
and  especially  all  voters,  are  responsible. 

What  young  men  can  do  for  the  city  and  for  the  country 
may  be  summed  up  then  in  the  exhortation  to  be  good 
citizens.  And  finally,  let  me  repeat,  a  good  citizen  must 
study  the  needs  of  the  city  conscientiously,  decide  what 
men  and  what  measures  are  for  the  best  interest  of  the 
city,  and  support  those  with  courage  and  independence  be- 
fore election  and  at  the  polls.  A  good  citizen  must  feel 
the  responsibility  that  rests  upon  every  voter  in  a  demo- 
cratic country  to  do  his  part  in  governing  from  day  to  day, 
and  as  a  freeman  he  must  scorn  all  dictation  from  others 
as  to  his  course,  and  above  all  he  must  remember  that 
upon  his  good  citizenship  depends  the  future  of  this  great 
country.  To  the  hands  of  the  young  men  of  this  city 
is  confided  the  welfare  of  her  three  million  inhabitants, 
and  the  destinies  of  the  United  States  of  America.  Be 
true  to  these  great  trusts,  and  you  will  deserve  the  love  and 
gratitude  of  your  fellow-men. 

Relation  of  Women  to  Good  Government  ^ 

The  fact  that  women  cannot  vote,  and  have  therefore 
no  direct  influence  in  the  selection  of  those  who  control 
the  government,  has  given  rise  to  the  false  behef  that  they 
can  exert  no  influence  upon  pubhc  questions,  and  to  the 
still  more  false  belief  that  the  character  of  the  government 
is  of  little  importance  to  them.     The  moment  any  thought 

^  Digest  of  address  delivered  at  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation, February  6,  1899. 


436  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

is  given  to  the  subject,  however,  it  is  impossible  not  to 
see  that  good  government  is  really  more  important  to 
women  than  it  is  to  men,  for  the  same  reason  that  it  is 
more  important  to  poor  men  than  to  rich  men,  because 
they  have  less  power  to  protect  themselves  from  the  ef- 
fects of  bad  government. 

I  will  show  you  that  this  is  true  by  illustrations  taken 
from  our  own  condition. 

We  in  New  York  live  under  three  different  governments 
—  the  National  or  United  States  Government,  of  which 
President  McKinley  is  now  the  head,  the  State  Govern- 
ment, of  which  Colonel  Roosevelt  is  the  head,  and  the 
City  Government,  of  which  Mayor  Van  Wyck  is  the  head. 
Each  one  of  these  governments  has  different  duties,  and 
takes  care  of  a  different  part  of  our  lives,  but  there  is  not 
a  woman  or  a  child  in  this  city  who  is  not  influenced, 
whose  life  is  not  made  harder  or  easier,  by  the  things  done 
bj'-  these  three  governments  of  ours. 

The  National  Government,  among  other  functions, 
decides  whether  the  country  is  to  be  at  war  or  at  peace 
with  other  nations ;  it  decides  upon  the  tariff  to  be  im- 
posed on  goods  we  want  to  buy  from  other  countries ;  it 
decides  how  large  our  armies  and  navies  are  to  be  in  time 
of  peace,  and  it  decides  many  other  matters  which  affect 
the  wages  of  every  man,  woman  and  child  in  the  country 
who  works  for  a  living,  and  whether  it  makes  decisions 
which  are  wise  and  right,  or  decisions  which  are  foolish 
and  wrong,  is  therefore  something  which  is  vitally  impor- 
tant to  all  the  people  of  the  country,  whether  they  can 
vote  or  not. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL   LEAGUE         437 

Think  how  mtimately  all  these  things  influence  our 
lives.  When  the  nation  is  at  war  many  women  and  chil- 
dren are  deprived  of  those  who  should  support  and  care 
for  them.  There  are  many  widows  and  orphans  made. 
The  people  have  to  bear  heavy  taxes  and  pay  for  the 
support  of  the  government,  money  which  otherwise  would 
support  themselves  in  comfort,  and  this  forces  women 
and  children  into  the  labor  market. 

High  tariffs  on  foreign  goods  deprive  the  people  of  the 
chance  of  having  many  things  which  would  conduce  to 
their  comfort  and  welfare  ;  large  armies  and  large  navies 
in  time  of  peace  cost  so  much  that  the  people  suffer  from 
the  weight  of  taxation  just  as  if  there  were  a  constant 
condition  of  war,  and  starvation  and  misery  result,  as 
in  Italy  and  Spain  today ;  and  it  is  the  weak  women  and 
children  who  suffer  most,  for  they  have  to  bear  what  is 
put  upon  them,  and  cannot  get  away,  as  the  men  often 
can. 

Our  second  kind  of  government,  our  State  Government, 
has  also  a  great  deal  to  do  with  our  well-being  or  om*  want 
of  it.  It  has  different  functions  from  our  National 
Government,  and  they  are  not  so  tremendously  important 
as  those,  but  they  are  important  enough,  and  here  again 
they  affect  women  and  children  more  vitally  than  they 
affect  men ,  and  poor  men  more  vitally  than  rich  men .  The 
State  Government  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  education ; 
it  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  all  the  sick  and  defective 
people  of  the  State,  with  the  insane,  with  the  blind,  the 
deaf,  the  idiotic,  with  all  the  institutions  where  poor  chil- 
dren are  cared  for ;  it  has  to  do  with  fire  insurance  and  with 


438  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

banks,  with  all  the  prisons,  and  with  many  other  matters 
that  concern  the  welfare  of  the  people.  The  State  Govern- 
ment ought  to  watch  over  all  these  poor  and  unhappy 
people  and  see  that  they  are  not  abused  and  injured,  but 
are  kindly  cared  for  and  taught  and  reformed  and  helped 
and  cured  ;  and  as  women  and  children  are  more  tender  and 
suffer  more  from  ill  treatment  and  neglect  than  men,  it 
is  more  important  to  them  to  have  a  good  State  Govern- 
ment. The  State  makes  all  the  laws  —  the  factory  laws, 
the  health  laws,  among  others.  Consider  how  closely 
these  laws  touch  the  lives  of  women  and  their  children. 
In  states  where  there  are  no  such  laws,  women  and  little 
children  work  sixteen  and  eighteen  hours  a  day;  their 
lives  are  crushed  and  destroyed.  They  get  no  time  to 
eat  or  to  sleep,  they  get  no  time  to  study  or  to  grow.  It 
is  the  government,  good  or  bad,  upon  which  their  fate 
depends.  And  even  after  the  good  laws  are  made,  if  there 
is  not  a  good  government  which  conscientiously  carries 
out  the  good  laws,  they  can  of  course  accomplish  nothing. 
Remember  how  long  the  law  requiring  that  women  and 
girls  in  shops  should  have  seats  and  be  allowed  to  use 
them  was  on  the  statute  book  before  it  was  of  any  use  to 
them.  For  thirteen  years  there  was  hardly  a  shop-keeper 
in  this  city  who  even  pretended  to  obey  the  law,  because 
there  were  no  officers  to  enforce  it. 

Then  as  regards  the  third  kind  of  government  under 
which  we  live,  our  City  Government,  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  all  the  people, 
and  especially  of  the  people  who  are  not  rich,  and  of  course 
to  the  women,  as  part  of  the  people. 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         439 

[Mrs.  Lowell  then  continued  her  address  with  a  de- 
scription of  the  comparatively  independent  conditions  of 
family  life  in  the  country,  an  argument  which  she  used 
effectively  in  one  of  her  papers  on  the  Reform  of  the  Civil 
Service,  to  emphasize  the  greater  importance  of  good 
government  for  cities.  Municipal  control  over  the  water 
supply,  the  food  supply,  public  health  and  the  cleanhness 
of  the  city  streets  she  again  maintains  can  be  so  exer- 
cised as  to  be  a  blessing  or  a  curse  to  the  inhabitants. 
Stress  also  is  laid  upon  the  duty  of  the  city  authorities 
to  provide  adequate  fire  protection,  and  the  best  possible 
public  schools.  It  is  important  to  all  dwellers  in  cities  to 
have  good  government,  ^'or  in  other  words  Civil  Service 
Reform."  Several  of  the  following  pages  of  this  unpub- 
lished address  are  devoted  to  a  closely  reasoned  state- 
ment of  the  necessity  of  Civil  Service  Reform  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  great  advantages  to  be  derived  from  it, 
and  it  then  continues :] 

To  return  now  from  this  rather  long  digression,  I  think 
you  will  all  agree  that,  even  if  I  have  not  proved  that 
good  government  is  more  important  to  women  than  to 
men,  at  least  I  have  shown  that  it  is  all-important  to 
both  if  they  Uve  in  a  city.  I  have  also  shown  you  that 
good  government  depends  upon  having  intelhgent  and 
honest  men  and  women  to  do  the  public  work.  My  next 
effort  will  be  to  show  how  women  may  help  to  secure  the 
appointment  of  such  men  and  women  to  public  office. 

I  think  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  women  could 
vote  they  would  have  more  power,  and  could  help  more 
directly  than  they  can  now,  especiall}^  in  securing  the 
enforcement  of  the  laws  which  most  concern  themselves. 


440  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Take  for  instance  the  law  of  1881,  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken,  which  requires  that  employers  shall  provide  suit- 
able seats  for  their  female  employees,  and  shall  permit 
the  use  of  them.  Although  this  law  had  been  on  the 
statute  book  for  thirteen  years,  in  many  of  the  largest 
shops  in  this  city,  where  hundreds  of  girls  and  young 
women  were  employed,  the  law  was  a  dead  letter,  and  these 
tired  young  creatures  stood,  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year, 
from  eight  in  the  morning  until  ten  at  night,  with  only 
short  intermissions.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that,  were 
these  women  voters,  their  needs,  and  the  law  enacted  to 
protect  them,  would  not  be  more  regarded. 

Again,  I  do  not  expect,  and  I  do  not  desire,  legisla- 
tion fixing  any  minimum  rate  of  wages  for  women  ;  but  is 
it  unreasonable  to  hope  that  with  the  added  dignity  and 
sense  of  personal  importance  and  the  increased  public 
spirit  which  the  suffrage  would  create  in  women,  there 
would  come  also  the  capacity  for  self-protection  by 
organization  ?  The  only  possible  means  by  which  in  the 
last  resort  wages  can  be  raised  is  by  union  among  the 
wage-earners,  by  labor  organization.  The  fierce  competi- 
tion among  retail  dealers  caused  by  the  great  consuming 
public  in  its  quest  for  cheapness  forces  them,  wilhngly  or 
unwillingly,  to  press  hardly  on  the  wholesale  dealers, 
who  in  their  turn  are  forced  to  drive  the  workers  to  killing 
work  at  starvation  wages ;  and  the  only  power  that  can 
strike  back,  and  stop  the  horrible  pressure  that  crushes 
out  life,  is  a  strong  trade  union  at  the  bottom.  This,  it 
seems,  women  cannot  now  have,  for  lack  of  self-confidence, 
and  for  lack  of  the  sense  of  class  obligation,  of  class  public 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE         441 

spirit  which  would  lead  them  to  stand  by  each  other  and 
to  consider  the  interests  of  their  fellow-workers  as  well  as 
their  own.  This  tendency  to  think  only  of  their  own 
needs  and  to  forget  the  needs  of  other  women  is  un- 
doubtedly a  strong  influence  in  keeping  women's  wages 
down.  Were  women  trained  in  class  pubhc  spirit,  in  an 
unselfish  regard  for  the  common  interests  of  their  fellows, 
they  would  reflect  upon  the  effect  of  their  own  actions  upon 
the  latter,  and  we  should  not  hear  of  an  educated  young 
woman  who  wants  to  add  a  little  to  her  income  taking 
a  clerk's  place,  but  refusing  to  accept  more  than  half  a 
clerk's  salary  because  she  does  not  need  more.  She 
would  think  of  the  women  who  do  need  more  and  whom 
her  selfish  unselfishness  is  helping  to  starve.  If  women 
thought  more  of  the  needs  of  other  women,  we  should 
not  hear  of  their  taking  neckties  to  embroider  at  one 
dollar  and  a  half  a  gross  '^and  find  their  own  silk,"  to 
get  pin  money.  They  would  think  of  the  widows  and 
children  who  have  to  sit  from  four  in  the  morning  until 
ten  at  night  to  make  a  living  out  of  the  same  embroidery. 

I  believe  that  the  qualities,  needed  to  help  women  win 
good  wages  for  themselves  and  for  each  other,  courage, 
self-confidence,  pubhc  spirit,  would  be  fostered  by  the 
suffrage,  and  that  is  one  reason  why  I  want  women  to  have 
the  suffrage. 

I  also  beheve  that  the  vote  would  be  an  actual  protection 
to  women  who  are  personally  at  the  mercy  of  brutal  men. 
There  are  not  a  few  men  who  have  no  regard  for  women  at 
all,  who  look  upon  them  only  as  things  to  be  injured,  in- 
sulted, maltreated  and  abused  at  the  will  of  men.    The  law 


442  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

should  protect  women  from  such  men,  or  at  least  should 
punish  the  men  when  they  carry  out  their  views  to  the 
personal  injury  of  the  unhappy  women  who  are  in  their 
hands ;  but  the  same  view  is  too  often  held  by  the  very 
judges  themselves.  Now,  had  the  women  the  franchise,  I 
cannot  help  believing  that,  besides  the  sense  of  independ- 
ence and  the  instinct  of  self-defence  which  would  in  them- 
selves be  a  protection  to  them,  there  would  also  be  felt  by 
the  brutal  man  who  now  despises  a  woman,  and  thinks  she 
is  of  no  account,  a  sense  of  respect  which  would  protect  her 
still  further,  and  that  besides  this,  the  judges,  regarding  the 
women  as  voters  as  of  equal  importance  with  the  men, 
would  punish  injury  to  them  far  more  severely  than  they 
are  now  inclined  to  do.  This  past  winter  a  woman  with 
her  children  was  three  times  forced  by  fear  to  fly  from 
her  husband  at  night,  spending  the  cold  dark  hours  in  an 
outhouse,  and  although  each  time  she  caused  his  arrest, 
he  was  discharged  each  time,  with  a  reprimand  only.  Had 
the  woman  been  able,  as  the  man  was,  to  punish  the 
judge  by  voting  against  him,  is  it  conceivable  that  he 
would  not  have  given  her  the  full  protection  accorded  her 
by  the  law? 

But  notwithstanding  the  disadvantage  under  which 
women  labor  because  they  cannot  vote,  I  believe  that 
they  have  already  great  influence  in  improving  the  govern- 
ment, and  that  they  can  have  a  great  deal  more,  and  that 
it  is  their  duty  to  bring  as  strong  an  influence  as  possible 
to  bear  upon  this  subject  of  vital  importance  to  themselves, 
to  their  children,  and  to  all  their  poor  and  weak  fellow- 
creatures. 


THE   WOMAN'S   MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE  443 

The  way  to  accomplish  this  is ;  first,  to  care  about  good 
government;  second,  to  inform  themselves  about  these 
matters,  to  observe,  to  study,  to  think,  so  that  they 
may  be  reasonable  and  know  what  they  are  talking  about ; 
and  third,  that  they  should  talk  about  them  among  them- 
selves, and  with  the  men  of  their  families  and  of  their 
acquaintance,  for  they  have  one  great  advantage  in  dealing 
with  public  questions. 

Whatever  other  advantages  or  disadvantages  may  have 
come  to  the  human  race,  and  to  women  themselves  from 
their  being  shut  off  in  the  main  from  the  struggle  for 
existence,  it  seems  to  me  that  there  has  been  one  great 
gain,  their  more  acute  moral  sense.  I  will  not  deny  that 
they  have  been  narrow,  nor  that  their  moral  sense  has  been 
used  in  a  narrow  field ;  I  only  claim  that  as  a  class  they  have 
a  more  sensitive  moral  instinct  than  men  as  a  class,  and  I 
therefore  hold  them  to  a  stricter  moral  responsibility. 
Conscience  in  human  beings  is  a  very  peculiar  and  one-sided 
thing.  Have  you  ever  reflected  upon  the  startling  charac- 
teristics of  the  professional  conscience,  using  professional 
in  its  widest  sense  to  mean  anything  by  which  people  make 
their  living  ?  Have  you  ever  noticed  that  each  profession 
has  a  conscience  adjusted  to  its  own  peculiar  conditions, 
allowing  its  members  to  perform  acts  which  men  of  all 
other  professions  condemn?  Lawyers  have  a  code  of 
their  own,  which  enables  them,  without  blame  from  their 
own  consciences  or  from  their  fellows,  to  do  things  which 
to  all  other  people  appear  to  be  at  least  of  questionable  hon- 
esty. Doctors  also  do  many  things  which  seem  extremely 
strange  to  all  other  people.     Business  men,  though  they 


444  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

perceive  the  extraordinary  lapses  from  truth  on  the  part 
of  lawyers  and  doctors,  yet  themselves  stray  very  far  from 
what  non-business  men  think  square  dealing.  PoHticians 
are  at  least  as  far  as  the  other  professions  from  following 
the  strict  line  of  honesty,  and  as  for  corporation  conscience, 
it  seems  the  most  perverted  of  all,  for  it  has  a  morbid 
sensitiveness  in  one  direction,  that  of  the  stockholders, 
and  an  amazing  callousness  in  all  other  directions.  How- 
ever, I  only  refer  to  these  facts  concerning  the  profes- 
sional conscience  as  a  proof  that  the  consciences  of  men 
are  greatly  influenced  by  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  must  earn  their  livings,  and  to  show  that  it  is  en- 
tirely natural  that  women,  not  having  been  subject  to  the 
strain  of  such  circumstances,  should  have  a  normal  con- 
science, and  consequently  a  clearer  moral  sense  than  men. 

This  clearer  moral  sense  has,  however,  not  been  as  useful 
in  raising  the  standards  of  the  human  race  as  it  ought  to 
have  been  because  of  the  very  reason  which  has  created  it, 
because  women  have  been  shut  out  from  the  general  life 
of  the  world. 

Now,  however,  that  they  are  coming  forward  into  the 
struggle  of  life,  that  they  are  taking  part  in  public  work 
and  in  movements  for  the  public  good,  they  should  prize 
this  power  which  their  sheltered  lives  have  given  them, 
and  feel  to  the  full  the  responsibility  which  its  possession 
imposes  upon  them.  The  danger  is  lest  they  should  cast 
it  away  as  one  of  the  trammels  which  have  hampered  them 
in  the  past ;  but  if  they  do,  they  will  commit  a  great  sin, 
for  it  should  be  an  inestimable  blessing  to  them  and  to  the 
world,  and  they  should  realize  that  it  is  a  sacred  trust.     It 


THE  WOMAN'S  MUNICIPAL  LEAGUE  445 

is  another  instance  of  the  contrast  between  evolution  and 
effort.  Through  the  past  ages  since  the  human  race  ex- 
isted, the  priceless  faculty  has  been  evolving  in  women, 
unconsciously  to  themselves ;  but  now  that  they  have  come 
to  a  higher  intellectual  development  and  recognize  the 
quality  in  themselves,  unless  they  consciously  preserve 
and  use  it,  applying  it  as  a  test  to  every  plan  of  action 
presented  for  their  acceptance,  they  will  lose  it.  ' 

In  reform  movements,  as  in  other  undertakings,  the  great 
service  which  women  can  render  is  the  maintenance  of 
uncompromising  ideals. 

They  can  do  this  now  more  easily  than  men,  because  they 
still  have  the  more  acute  moral  sense  and  see  the  ideal 
more  clearly,  and  because  they  are  still  in  a  measure  re- 
moved from  the  necessity  of  acconamodating  the  ideal  to 
the  details  of  the  actual.  In  other  words,  women  may  have 
the  privilege  if  they  will,  of  pointing  to  the  higher  aim  to 
which  all  action  should  be  directed,  and  of  ignoring  the 
means  by  which  the  aim  is  to  be  reached.  But  they  will 
not  long  continue  to  hold  these  advantages  unless  they 
consciously  and  conscientiously  exercise  them.  The 
temptation  to  give  up  the  ideal  will  assail  them  also  as 
they  are  more  and  more  drawn  into  the  strife,  and  to  give 
up  the  ideal  means  to  give  up  working  with  the  eternal 
laws  of  Right,  and  to  work  against  them,  to  give  up 
working  with  God  and  to  struggle  against  Him. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Tramps  ^ 

September  30,  1896. 
Commander  Booth  Tucker, 

Salvation  Army. 

Sir: 

In  asking  you  to  appoint  a  time  when  we  could  explain 
to  you  our  views  and  plans  in  regard  to  the  best  way  of 
dealing  with  homeless  men  in  New  York  City,  we  did  not 
say  why  we  regarded  ourselves  as  having  any  particular 
claim  to  be  heard  on  the  subject,  so  that  you  will  now 
excuse  us  if  we  introduce  ourselves  more  at  length. 

We  are  members  of  a  body  which,  since  its  organization 
two  years  ago,  has  devoted  especial  attention  to  the  best 
way  of  diminishing  vagrancy  in  this  city,  and,  as  individuals, 
we  have  each  studied  the  whole  subject  in  its  wider  aspects 
for  a  much  longer  period. 

New  York  City,  among  its  other  peculiarities,  has  been 
peculiar  in  never  making  any  decent  public  provision  for 
the  care  of  homeless  men  until  within  the  past  year,  when  a 
beginning,  to  be  described  later,  was  made. 

In  place  of  any  such  provision,  there  grew  up  the  most 
pernicious  system  ever  known  in  any  civilized  commu- 
nity, the  police  lodgings,  whereby  men  and  women  were 
received  for  the  night  in  the  precinct  station  houses, 
without  examination  of  any  kind,  kept  practically  without 

*  Written  by  Mrs.  Lowell  for  the  committee. 
446 


TRAMPS  447 

supervision,  given  no  bath,  no  bed,  no  food,  and  turned 
out  each  morning,  to  return  at  night  to  the  same  or  some 
other  station  house,  and  continue  this  Ufe  for  years. 
No  one  has  ever  been  found  to  defend  this  practice ; 
during  the  past  twenty  years  at  least  it  has  received  fre- 
quent and  strong  condemnation  from  many  quarters ;  but 
it  was  not  until  March  15  of  this  year,  that  the  last 
lodging  room  was  officially  closed. 

The  essential  evils  of  the  pohce  lodgings  system  were 
three : 

1.  Danger  of  physical  contagion. 

2.  Certainty  of  moral  degradation. 

3.  Encouragement  of  vagrancy. 

A  proper  system  should  avoid  all  three,  and  substitute 
for  them  the  corresponding  advantages  : 

1.  Cleanliness  and  safety  from  disease. 

2.  Moral  improvement. 

3.  Gradual  diminution  of  vagrancy. 

It  has  been  during  the  past  two  years  the  object  of  the 
Committee  to  which  we  belong  to  introduce  such  a  system 
in  this  city. 

In  1895  we  issued  a  small  pamphlet,  '^How  to  Help 
Homeless  People, ''  a  copy  of  which  we  leave  with  you ;  and 
in  consequence  of  our  efforts,  the  Department  of  Charities 
and  Correction  undertook  to  receive  homeless  men  at  East 
Twenty-sixth  Street  and  lodge  them  over  night,  with  the 
intention,  as  we  hoped,  of  disposing  of  them  the  following 
morning  in  accordance  with  their  own  statement,  sending 
men  not  resident  sixty  days  in  this  city  to  the  care  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities  as  State  paupers,  and  sending 
self-confessed  city  vagrants  to  the  institution  provided 
by  the  city  for  the  care  of  homeless  men  —  the  Workhouse. 

The  intention  was  never  carried  out,  however,  and 
gradually,  during  the  summer  of  1895  there  grew  up  on 


448  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  East  Twenty-sixth  Street  dock  a  lodging  room  which 
was  almost  as  bad  as  the  police  lodgings  and  to  which  hun- 
dreds of  men  came  night  after  night  to  lodge  as  a  matter 
of  course.  There  was  practically  no  more  examination 
than  at  the  precinct  station  houses ;  there  was  not  much 
more  supervision ;  and,  as  in  the  latter,  here  also  vagrancy 
was  directly  encouraged,  the  dock  lodging  house  of  the 
Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction  being 
only  another  evil  added  to  the  police  lodging  rooms. 

In  consequence  of  this  condition,  the  Committee  on 
Vagrancy,  of  which  we  are  members,  applied  to  the  Board 
of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  on  December  26,  1895, 
in  support  of  the  request  of  Commissioner  Faure  of  the 
new  Board  of  Charity  Commissioners,  for  an  appropriation 
to  provide  a  proper  system  of  caring  for  homeless  men  by 
that  department.  Stress  was  laid  on  the  fact  that  the 
principal  thing  required  was  inquiry  into  the  actual  con- 
dition of  each  individual  who  applied  for  lodgings  as  home- 
less, in  order  to  discriminate  in  disposing  of  him,  so  that 
men  with  homes  in  other  cities  should  be  returned  to  them 
by  the  State  Board  of  Charities  under  the  State  Pauper 
Law ;  that  actual  city  vagrants  should  be  committed 
to  the  Workhouse  ;  and  that  young  beginners  in  the  de- 
grading life  of  vagrancy  might  be  ^f erred  to  private 
charity  and  some  hope  of  salvation  be  offered  them,  the 
object  in  all  cases  being  to  stop  the  homelessness. 

Inquiry  being  the  first  step,  money  to  pay  inquiry 
officers  was  needed,  and  properly  qualified  officers.  The 
money  asked  for  ($10,000)  was  appropriated,  on  the  un- 
derstanding that  this  provision  by  the  Department  of 
Charities  for  the  proper  care  of  homeless  men  was  to  take 
the  place  of  the  Police  Lodging  Houses,  and  on  March  11, 
1896,  the  City  Lodging  House  was  opened  and,  as  we  have 
said,  on  March  15,  the  Police  Lodging  Houses  were  closed 


TRAMPS  449 

and  one  stain  removed  from  the  name  of  our  city.  The 
City  Lodging  House  was  kept  open  for  nearly  three 
months,  and  the  result  was  very  encouraging,  despite  the 
imperfections  incident  to  an  entirely  new  undertaking. 

We  were  not  at  all  satisfied  either  with  the  amount  or 
thoroughness  of  the  inquiries  made,  and  yet  even  the 
imperfect  work  done  more  than  confirmed  our  previous 
opinion  as  to  its  value.  The  statistics  collected  were  very 
striking,  showing  among  other  things  that  out  of  a  total  of 
9,386  lodgers,  3,622  had  been  in  the  city  less  than  sixty 
days  and  968  more  less  than  one  year,  while  4,678  were 
under  30  years  of  age,  and  in  good  health.  From  these 
figures  our  conclusions  are  that  what  is  needed  for  our  city 
is  a  temporary  lodging  house  maintained  by  the  Depart- 
ment of  Charities,  where  men  accidentally  homeless  may 
be  received  and  kept  so  long  as  is  necessary  to  determine 
as  to  the  appropriate  disposition  of  each  one,  but  that  there 
is  no  need  to  supply  any  permanent  resort  for  homeless 
men  in  the  city,  since  we  believe  that  such  a  place  would 
serve  only  to  encourage  men  in  a  Ufe  of  vagrancy,  than 
which  nothing,  in  our  opinion,  could  be  more  cruel. 

And  it  is  upon  this  ground  that  we  are  disturbed  by 
what  we  understand  to  be  your  plan  to  establish  cheap 
or  free  lodging  houses,  and  we  have  asked  for  this  meet- 
ing in  order  to  beg  that  you  will  not  put  it  into  operation. 
Unfortunately  there  are  in  the  city  already  104  cheap 
lodging  houses  for  men,  with  15,368  beds,  the  cost  per 
bed  per  night  running  from  7  cents  to  35  cents.  These  are 
acknowledged  by  all  persons,  we  believe,  to  be  an  unmiti- 
gated evil,  and  although  we  know  that  such  lodging  houses 
as  you  would  control  would  have  many  features  not  to  be 
found  in  the  existing  houses,  yet  we  are  firmly  convinced 
that  even  your  lodging  houses  would,  in  the  end,  serve  to 
increase  vagrancy. 

2g 


450  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  number  of  vagrants  in  any  city  or  country  is  not  at 
any  time  fixed,  but  fluctuates  with  conditions  and  temp- 
tations, and  every  additional  provision,  good,  bad,  or  in- 
different, made  to  shelter  homeless  men,  will  serve  to  draw 
men,,  who  have  homes,  but  who  for  any  reason  do  not  like 
themT^rom  theirtei^es^nto  a  homeless  state.  Insteadof 
substituting  your  lodging  houses  for  the  existing  lodging 
houses,  you  will  only  add  them  to  them  just  as  the  lodg- 
ing at  East  Twenty-sixth  Street  was  in  1895  added  to 
the  police  lodgings,  and  the  number  of  homeless  men  will 
correspondingly  increase. 

Instead  then  of  creating  a  few  thousand  more  vagrants 
for  the  purpose  of  trying  to  raise  them  morally  afterwards, 
will  you  not  bring  the  great  power  of  the  Salvation  Army 
to  bear  on  the  vagrants  who  now  live  in  our  New  York 
lodging  houses?  Hire  rooms  or  buildings  next  to  lodg- 
ing houses  now  in  operation  and  fit  them  up  with  every 
appliance  for  moral  and  spiritual  care,  and  attract  the 
lodgers  of  actual  lodging  houses  into  meetings,  for  instruc- 
tion, for  pleasant  social  evenings,  for  religious  teaching ; 
but  do  not  tempt  from  the  country  the  innocent,  honest 
lads  who  are  longing  to  try  their  luck  in  the  great  city  and 
who,  when  they  hear  that  the  Salvation  Army  has  chea^ 
lodgings,  will  think  it  right  to  come  and  live  in  them,  for, 
"iTyoudb,  the  souls  of  those  who  go  to  destruction  in  this 
city  will  far  outnumber  any  that  you  can  save,  and  you 
will  do  them  and  all  of  us  a  great  injury,  which  all  the 
good  you  have  done  cannot  outweigh.  We  shall,  of  course, 
continue  our  efforts  to  secure  for  the,  city  such  a  system 
for  the  care  of  homeless  men  as  we  believe  to  be  needed, 
including  a  temporary  shelter  in  the  city  and  a  Farm 
School  for  vagrants  to  take  the  place  of  the  Workhouse, 
as  soon  as  it  can  be  established  and  we  hope  that  we  shall 
have  your  help  in  this.     As  to  shelters  for  homeless  women, 


TRAMPS  451 

we  can  only  quote  from  our  published  report  of  last  Spring, 
when  we  said  : 

"To  turn  now  to  the  more  difficult  problem  of  homeless 
women  —  the  committee  beUeves  that  the  added  de- 
gradation which  must  almost  inevitably  cling  to  that 
unhappy  creature,  a  homeless  woman,  even  beyond  that 
of  a  homeless  man,  and  the  fact  that  she  is  a  constant 
danger  and  injury  to  all  around  her,  makes  it  still  more 
cruel  to  provide  shelters  for  such  than  for  men.  There 
is  less  excuse  for  them  also,  because,  unless  a  woman  is 
a  confirmed  drunkard,  she  can  usually  find  some  home 
whereat  least  her  board  will  be  gladly  given  for  her  services ; 
and  if  she  is  a  confirmed  drunkard,  she  had  far  better, 
for  every  reason,  be  placed  in  the  care  of  an  institution 
than  encouraged  to  remain  at  large. 

"The  effort  should  be  to  force  all  homeless  women 
either  into  the  workhouse,  the  almshouse,  or  into  per- 
manent homes,  where  they  can  be  watched  over  and  j3rQ=-- 
tected  from  themselves  and^thers,  and  from  which  they 
cac^be  sent  tQ,gLtiLatioBfr  in- families.  Such  places  (like 
the  'Hopper  Home,'  'House  of  the  Good  Shepherd,' 
'Magdalen  Benevolent  Society'  and  others)  are  a  blessing, 
but  not  homes  which  allow  their  inmates  the  liberty  to 
come  and  go  at  will. 

"In  the  September  1895  number  of  the  London 
Charity  Organization  Review,  is  an  article  on  'Cheap 
Shelters,'  from  which  the  following  extracts  are  very 
suggestive : 

'The  good  intention  in  starting  "Women's  Shelters", 
is  to  help  the  poorest  and  lowest,  and,  by  providing 
decent  lodging  free,  or  for  the  smallest  payment, 
to  clear  the  streets  of  women  who,  though  homeless, 
will  not  go  to  the  workhouse.  So  far  are  these  shelters, 
ip.  fact,  from  accomplishing  this,  that  the  actual  result 


452  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

is  precisely  the  reverse  of  that  intended,  and  instead 
of  clearing  the  streets,  a  women's  shelter  has  the  effect 
of  considerably  increasing  the  number  of  bad  women 
who  haunt  them. 

^To  put  the  matter  plainly,  women's  shelters  give  dis- 
tinct encouragement  to  immorality  by  making  a  life  of 
sin  more  easy  to  women  and  girls,  through  the  casual 
shelter  afforded  them.  Women  of  bad  character  ad- 
mitted for  the  night  are  turned  out  next  morning  to  spend 
the  day  and  evening  in  the  streets  or  as  they  can,  and  are 
again  admitted  at  night.  This  enables  them  to  carry 
on  their  shameful  trade  freely,  making  use  of  the  shelters 
when  it  suits  their  convenience. 

'Nor  is  this  all.  Besides  the  facilities  to  women  of 
the  neighborhood,  others  of  the  lowest  class  are  attracted 
from  a  distance,  thus  increasing  the  special  evil  a  shelter 
is  designed  to  remedy. 

'The  question  of  the  harm  done  by  women's  shelters 
is  altogether  too  large  a  one  to  be  discussed  on  the  narrow 
basis  of  benefit  to  a  percentage  of  those  admitted.  The 
harm  done  outside  can  never  be  precisely  reckoned  up : 
but  it  is  of  a  nature  so  calamitous  and  enduring  in  its  effects 
that  the  worst  injury  from  dirt  or  small-pox  is  as  nothing 
in  comparison.' 

''There  are,  of  course,  and  must  be,  some  casual  cases 
of  homelessness  of  women  and  children,  and  the  practical 
way  to  manage  these  is  not  to  encourage  the  cruelty'-  which 
turns  helpless  creatures  into  the  street,  by  providing  per- 
manent places  for  them,  but  to  treat  each  such  case  on  its 
own  merits,  and  with  strangers,  to  send  or  much  better  to 
take  them  to  the  Joint  Application  Bureau  at  the  Charities 
Building,  105  East  Twenty-second  Street,  which  is  open 
from  9  A.M.  to  midnight  every  day,  excepting  Sunday, 
and  from  6  p.m.  to  midnight  on  Sunday,  where  each  case 


TRAMPS  453 

will  be  carefully  considered  and  provided   for   in   some 
way.'' 

(Signed)  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell, 

Charlotte  Lindley  Couper, 

John  A.  McKim, 

R.  R.  McBURNEY, 

Wm.  H.  Tolman, 

Jno.  Lloyd  Thomas, 

Jacob  A.  Riis, 

Homer  Folks. 

The  Influence  of  Cheap  Lodging  Houses  on  City 

Pauperism  ^ 

There  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  problems  pre- 
sented by  city  vagrancy  and  homelessness.  They  are 
exactly  opposite  in  every  respect,  and  result,  naturally, 
in  exactly  opposite  conduct. 

The  first,  which  is  held  by  a  large  company  of  most  in- 
telligent and  philanthropic  men  and  women  all  over  the 
world,  is  that  the  present  condition  of  things  is  susceptible 
only  of  mitigation,  never  of  radical  change.  They  appear 
to  think  that  because  vagrancy  and  homelessness  have  in 
every  civilized  community  always  been  one  of  the  worst 
of  evils,  therefore  they  must  continue,  and  that  all  the 
community  can  do  is  to  make  their  evil  less  evil ;  for  even 
they,  I  think,  do  not  contend  that  vagrancy  and  homeless- 
ness can  be  changed  into  benefits  either  to  the  unhappy 
victims  or  to  the  community. 

^  Written  for  the  Baltimore,  Maryland,  Charity  Organization  Society, 
February,  1897. 


454  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  course  of  action  they  advocate  is  that  decent  pro- 
vision shall  be  made  for  homeless  and  vagrant  men  and 
women,  that  they  shall  be  recognized  as  a  necessary 
part  of  the  body  poHtic,  and  that  both  private  charity  and 
the  municipal  authorities  shall  build  for  them  cheap  or 
free  lodging  houses,  where  they  may  Hve  clean,  healthy, 
decent,  and  even  comparatively  comfortable  lives,  in  order 
that  they  may  themselves  not  be  miserable  and  also  that 
the  community  may  be  protected  from  the  contagion  of 
moral  and  physical  disease  which  they  spread  about  them, 
when  they  are  neglected  and  ignored. 

There  is,  of  course,  much  to  be  said  in  support  of  this 
view  and  this  course  of  conduct ;  but  the  other  party  dis- 
sents from  it  in  toto  and  thinks  the  providing  of  cheap  and 
free  lodging  houses  as  places  of  permanent,  or  anything 
approaching  permanent,  residence  is  a  great  economic 
mistake,  and  that  though  it  is  undoubtedly  benevolent, 
it  is  not  beneficent,  but  on  the  contrary  does  harm  and  is 
cruel. 

Those  who  hold  this  view,  among  whom  I  desire  to  be 
counted,  believe  that  vagrancy  and  homelessness  need  not 
be  permanent  evils,  and  that  they  ought  not  to  be  allowed 
to  be  permanent  evils ;  that  they  can  be  cured,  and  that 
they  ought  to  be  cured. 

We  think  that  the  life  in  a  cheap  lodging  house,  under 
whatever  management  it  may  be,  is  a  life  not  fit  for  a  man 
to  lead ;  and  further  that  a  life  without  duties,  without  ties, 
without  affection,  without  home  influences  is  a  life  which 
is  demoralizing,  whether  it  is  led  in  a  luxurious  clubhouse 
on  Fifth  Avenue,  or  in  a  miserable  ten  cent  lodging  house 


TRAMPS  455 

on  the  Bowery ;  and  that  therefore  people  who  are  trying 
to  do  good  to  their  fellow-men  should  establish  neither 
lodging  clubs  nor  lodging  houses,  although  both  will 
unfortunately  be  estabUshed  by  people  who  are  seeking 
pleasure  and  gain. 

Pray  do  not  misunderstand  me.  The  lodging  houses  we 
object  to  are  such  as  make  men  contented  with  this  miser- 
able isolated  Ufe;  which  make  a  man  physically  com- 
fortable without  raising  his  moral  and  mental  standards ; 
which  provide  lodgings  and  food,  and  allow  the  lodgers 
entire  liberty  to  procure  the  money  to  pay  for  them  in  any 
way  they  can ;  which  allow  men  to  settle  down  for  years, 
accepting  these  lodging  houses  as  substitutes  for  homes. 
A  home  which  takes  entire  charge  of  its  inmates,  which 
teaches  them  and  raises  their  standard  and  makes  them 
hate  the  life  they  are  leading;  which  keeps  them  only 
so  long  as  is  necessary  to  train  them  for  self-support; 
which  pushes  them  on  and  up  continually,  is  not  what  I 
refer  to. 

The  trouble  is  that  the  usual  free  or  cheap  lodging 
house,  instead  of  raising  the  moral  and  intellectual  stan- 
dard of  its  inmates,  descends  to  their  standard,  except 
physically,  accepts  their  view  that  the  homeless  hfe 
is  a  natural  and  necessary  one,  and  by  making  it  more 
bearable,  tends  to  confirm  them  in  their  love  for  it.  The 
cheapening  of  the  means  of  living,  although  a  blessing  to 
persons  whose  standards  are  high  enough  to  make  them 
desire  and  strive  for  something  better  than  a  bare  existence, 
is  a  curse  to  many  who  are  satisfied  with  merely  living,  if 
they  can  accomplish  that  without  any  exertion.    This 


456  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

living  without  exertion  and  with  Hberty  to  indulge  the 
lowest  propensities  makes  up  for  many  deprivations,  and 
it  is  this  that  makes  cheap  lodging  houses  so  attractive 
and  so  fatal.  The  only  way  to  counteract  the  temptations 
presented  by  this  life  is  not  to  present  facilities  for  carrying 
it  on,  but  on  the  contrary  to  force,  to  drive,  to  spur  all 
those  who  are  inclined  to  it  into  a  better  way. 

There  are  in  this  city  already  105  cheap  lodging  houses, 
with  beds  for  sixteen  thousand  men,  the  cost  per  bed 
per  night  running  from  7  cents  to  35  cents,  and  these 
are  acknowledged  by  all  persons,  we  beheve,  to  be  an 
unmitigated  evil ;  and  yet  the  first  of  these  was  established 
by  the  advice  of  a  City  Missionary,  who  thought  that  to 
provide  one  or  two  such  houses  would  be  a  great  blessing 
to  homeless  men.  He  certainly  never  looked  forward  to 
providing  for  sixteen  thousand  men  in  such  places. 

The  former  Chief  of  PoHce,  Superintendent  Byrnes,  said 
of  them :  ^'It  is  undeniable,  that  the  lodging  houses  have 
a  powerful  tendency  to  produce,  foster  and  increase  crime. 
In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  stranger  who  drifts  into  a  lodg- 
ing house  turns  out  a  thief  or  a  burglar,  if  indeed  he  does 
not,  sooner  or  later,  become  a  murderer.  Thousands  of 
instances  of  this  kind  occur  every  year.^' 

I  am  aware  that  one  principal  object  of  cheap  lodging 
houses  established  by  municipalities  or  by  private  charity 
is  to  supersede  the  common  lodging  houses,  or  force  them 
to  improve  by  the  competition ;  but  I  contend  that  the 
object  cannot  be  attained  by  this  means  and  that  the 
improvement  of  common  lodging  houses  must  be  accom- 
plished by  law  and  by  strict  inspection. 


TRAMPS  457 

This,  then,  is  our  first  charge  against  cheap  lodging 
houses  :  that  they  do  not  really  help,  but  on  the  contrary, 
that  they  keep  down  those  who  frequent  them.  But  we 
beheve  that  they  have  also  to  answer  for  a  worse  sin,  and 
that  every  new  lodging  house,  under  whatever  manage- 
ment, increases  the  number  of  vagrant  and  homeless 
persons. 

It  is  because  young  people  think  there  are  so  many 
chances  of  getting  on  in  the  great  city  that  they  now 
flock  into  it,  and  everything  which  makes  them  think  it 
still  easier  to  find  food  and  shelter  without  much  trouble 
but  adds  to  their  number. 

You  may  well  ask  me  what  measures  we,  who  believe 
that  vagrancy  and  homelessness  can  be  cured,  do  ad- 
vocate?    How  do  we  propose  to  cut  off  the  streams? 

First  we  believe  in  treating  each  one  of  these  unhappy 
men  and  women,  so  far  as  it  is  possible,  as  an  individual, 
finding  out  about  them  and  using  the  knowledge  gained 
to  do  what  is  best  for  him  or  her.  Speaking  broadly, 
there  are  three  classes  of  persons  styled  homeless  in  any 
great  city. 

To  begin  at  the  end,  there  are  those  who  choose  to  be 
homeless.  For  them  to  be  shut  up  away  from  the  over- 
powering temptations  which  destroy  them  would  be  a 
mercy.  They  should  be  arrested  as  vagrants  and  kept 
in  what  General  Booth  has  called  ''An  Asylum  for  Moral 
Lunatics,"  and  failing  such  a  refuge,  in  the  workhouse  for 
the  longest  terms  allowed  by  law. 

In  the  second  class  are  the  honest  seekers  for  work  who 
come  to  the  city,  ignorantly  thinking  to  find  the  means 


458  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  self-support  here,  and  fail  entirely,  being  forced  to  seek 
charitable  aid  within  a  few  days  of  their  arrival.  They 
will  in  an  incredibly  short  time  become  demoralized  if  they 
are  encouraged  to  hope  ;  and  they  should  be  snatched  up 
and  sent  home  as  soon  as  possible;  at  any  rate,  it  is 
cruel  to  do  anything  to  keep  them  in  a  life  which  leads  to 
the  lowest  depths. 

The  third  class  is  of  young  fellows  who  either  do  not  know 
how  to  earn  their  living,  or  do  not  care  to  do  it,  who  are 
ignorant,  or  else  lazy,  or  only  without  any  settled  habit 
of  work.  Whether  they  have  homes  or  not,  they  certainly 
should  never  be  allowed  to  live  permanently  in  free  or 
cheap  lodging  houses  if  it  can  be  helped.  If  charity  has 
to  support  them,  it  should  be  in  some  place  where  they 
would  be  under  control  and  where  they  should  be  taught 
to  work  steadily  every  day  and  all  day  long. 

One  of  the  great  evils  of  cheap  lodging  houses,  whether 
commercial  or  charitable,  is  that  a  man  who  gets  good 
wages  can  earn  by  one  or  two  days'  work  enough  to  pay  his 
way  for  a  week,  and  a  man  who  works  two  days  each  week 
and  idles  four  is  not  a  desirable  person,  whether  regarded 
as  an  individual  or  as  a  member  of  the  community.  There- 
fore the  benevolent  should  not  provide  houses  where  men 
may  live  in  this  way,  but  should,  by  all  means,  provide 
places  where  they  shall  be  obliged  to  work  hard  and  reg- 
ularly. Farm  schools  are  the  best  places  and  are  in- 
tended to  receive  and  educate  the  young  men  who  claim 
to  be  homeless  in  this  city.  Of  the  9,386  lodgers  who  in 
two  months  last  year  were  received  in  the  City  Lodging 
House,  4,678  were  under  thirty  and  were  strong  men. 


TRAMPS  459 

Surely  it  is  only  cruel  to  encourage  such  men  to  lead  an  idle, 
worthless  life  and  to  become  confirmed  vagrants. 

The  Committee  on  Vagrancy  of  the  Conference  of 
Charities,  which  holds  the  views  I  have  been  trying  to 
explain,  advocates  the  maintenance  by  the  city  of  a 
lodging  house  to  be  used  as  a  distributing  centre  for  the 
three  classes  I  have  described,  and  of  a  farm  school  where 
those  who  cannot  be  otherwise  provided  for  shall  be 
trained. 


CHAPTER  XX 
Miscellaneous  Papers 
Imprisonment  of  Witnesses 

My  dear  Mr.  Fairchild  :  ^ 

I  have  an  uncomfortable  feeling  that  I  wrote  to  you 
some  time  ago  and  asked  if  you  could  give  me  the  chapter 
and  year  of  the  law  which  you  were  instrumental  in  having 
passed,  forbidding  the  imprisonment  of  witnesses  in  this 
State,  and  that  you  were  unable  to  do  so. 

This  does  not  deter  me,  however,  from  asking  again,  if 
you  can  help  me  to  find  the  law  in  question,  for  I  have  just 
heard  of  a  most  flagrant  case,  that  of  a  Norwegian  sailor, 
whose  pocket  was  picked  by  a  companion,  and  who  has 
consequently  been  already  imprisoned  in  the  Richmond 
County  Jail,  which  is  a  filthy  hole,  full  of  criminals  and 
vagrants,  for  thirty  days,  and  unless  something  can  be 
done  about  him,  he  is  to  stay  there  another  month.  If 
he  should  turn  anarchist,  or  nihilist,  and  murder  every- 
body connected  with  the  law  or  government  when  he  does 
get  out,  it  would  not  be  a  surprising  result ! 

Sincerely  yours, 

J.  S.  Lowell. 
November  2nd,  1891. 

*  Letter  to  Hon.  Charles  S.  Fairchild. 
460 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  461 

The  Elmira  Reformatory^ 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  Evening  Post. 

Sir: 

May  I  say  a  few  words  more  about  the  Elmira  Re- 
formatory inquiry  ?  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  one  of  the 
worst  results  of  this  whole  deplorable  business,  that  is, 
the  discredit  which  will  fall  upon  the  system  upon  which 
the  State  reformatory  was  estabhshed,  and  upon  which 
it  was  successfully  conducted  during  the  first  years  of  its 
existence. 

Mr.  Brockway^s  principle  that  moral  means  are  the  most 
efl&cacious  in  reforming  criminals  is  sound,  but  Mr.  Brock- 
way  himself  has  dealt  it  the  most  fatal  blow  by  abandon- 
ing it  for  30  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the  reformatory, 
and  the  danger  is  that  this  will  be  accepted  as  proof  that 
the  principle  itself  is  false.  As  a  fact,  however,  what  has 
been  proved  is  that  Mr.  Brockway  was  right  when  he  said 
the  reformatory  should  not  contain  more  than  five  hundred 
inmates,  and  his  own  failure  is  due  to  the  fact  that,  despite 
the  protest  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  made  yearly 
since  1886,  the  managers  have,  nevertheless,  allowed  the 
institution  to  be  extended  until  it  now  contains  foxirteen 
hundred  inmates,  and  this  number,  Mr.  Brockway  says 
in  his  testimony,  cannot  be  managed  by  one  man  with- 
out recourse  to  the  old  brutal  methods  which  the  re- 
formatory was  established  to  supersede. 

Mr.  Brockway  is  himself  the  most  pitiable  victim  of  this 
misuse  of  the  reformatory,  for  it  has  made  him  false  to  the 
very  principle  to  which  he  has  devoted  his  fife. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

New  York,  September  26,  1894. 

1  Published  in  New  York  Evening  Post,  September  27,  1894. 


A62  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Inspection  of  Private  Charities^ 

The  recent  decision  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  in  the  case 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  vs.  the  New  York 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children  is  not 
of  extreme  importance  so  far  as  regards  the  nominal  ques- 
tion involved,  for,  whether  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
inspects  or  does  not  inspect  the  building  of  the  society, 
the  welfare  of  only  a  comparatively  small  number  of  per- 
sons will  be  affected  in  a  small  degree,  if  at  all.  There  are 
two  other  aspects  of  the  decision,  however,  which  seem 
to  me  to  be  of  very  great  importance  to  the  people  of  the 
State  of  New  York,  and  these  have  received  so  far  too 
little  attention  from  the  public  press. 

The  State  Board  of  Charities  was  established  in  1867 
by  Chapter  951,  and  was  required  by  that  law  to  visit  ^^all 
the  charitable  and  correctional  institutions  of  the  State, 
excepting  prisons,  receiving  State  aid."  By  Chapter  571, 
Laws  of  1873,  the  powers  of  the  Board  were  enlarged,  and 
the  Board  or  any  of  its  commissioners  was  thereby  au- 
thorized, whenever  they  deemed  it  expedient,  "to  visit  and 
inspect  any  charitable,  eleemosynary,  correctional  or 
reformatory  institution  in  the  State,  excepting  prisons, 
whether  receiving  State  aid  or  maintained  by  municipalities 
or  otherwise." 

,  After  the  passage  of  this  law  the  Board  exercised  this 
power  whenever  in  its  opinion  any  institution  in  the  State 
which  had  the  care  of  dependent  persons,  whether  men, 
women  or  children,  was  suspected  of  not  giving  proper 

*  Published  in  Charities  of  January  27,  1900. 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  463 

care  to  those  dependent  persons.  During  the  twenty-j&ve 
years  from  1873  to  1898  the  only  important  society,  if  I 
remember  rightly,  which  protested  against  the  right  of  the 
State  Board  to  inspect  was  the  New  York  Hospital,  and 
this  upon  the  ground  that  the  charter  granted  by  King 
George  III  to  that  society  protected  it  from  inspection 
by  a  board  created  only  by  the  State  of  New  York.  But 
the  present  decision  now,  after  twenty-seven  years,  plainly 
declares  that  the  State  Board  of  Charities  has  the  power 
to  inspect  only  institutions  which  receive  public  money 
for  use  or  distribution  as  charity,  and  thus  all  institutions 
which  do  not  receive  public  money  are  withdrawn  from 
its  supervision,  and  the  dependent  inmates  are  left  with- 
out the  protection  which  the  State  has  afforded  them  for 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

This  aspect  of  the  decision  which  affects  the  welfare  of 
thousands  of  dependent  and  helpless  men,  women  and 
children  is  certainly  important  enough  to  attract  public 
attention,  were  there  no  other.  There  is  another  aspect 
of  this  decision,  however,  which  is  still  more  grave,  for  it 
tends  to  undermine  respect  for  the  opinion  of  the  majority 
of  the  judges  of  the  Court  of  Appeals,  and  that  certainly 
would  be  a  public  calamity.  As  stated  above,  the  law  of 
1867,  establishing  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  did  pro- 
vide that  it  should  inspect  only  institutions  receiving 
State  aid ;  but  the  law  of  1873  swept  away  that  restriction, 
giving  it  power,  in  its  discretion,  to  inspect  others,  and 
Article  VIII  of  the  Constitution  of  1894,  with  the  laws  of 
1895  (Chapter  771)  and  of  1896  (Chapter  546)  made  it  the 
duty  of  the  Board  to  inspect  all  charitable  institutions, 


464  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

for  they  provided  that  the  State  Board  of  Charities  ''shall 
visit  and  inspect  all  institutions,  societies  and  associations, 
whether  State,  county,  municipal,  incorporated,  or  not 
incorporated,  private  or  otherwise,  which  are  of  a  chari- 
table, eleemosynary,  reformatory,  or  correctional  char- 
acter or  design/' 

Now,  in  the  face  of  this  expUcit  statement  of  the  con- 
stitution and  the  laws  that  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
shall  visit  and  inspect  all  institutions  coming  under  the 
above  description.  Judge  O'Brien  states,  and  Judges  Parker, 
Gray  and  Bartlett  concur,  that 

''The  powers  of  the  board  over  charitable  institutions 
originated  in  the  abuses  supposed  to  exist  in  the  appro- 
priation and  expenditure  of  public  money  for  charitable 
purposes.  .  .  .  The  charity  with  which  the  State  is  con- 
cerned .  .  .  consists  in  the  distribution  of  rehef  or  public 
aid,  the  fruit  of  taxation  levied  alike  upon  the  willing  and 
the  unwilling.  The  right  of  visitation  and  regulation  ap- 
plies only  to  those  institutions,  public  or  private,  through 
which  the  State  fulfils  this  function.  They  alone  are 
within  the  reason  of  the  law,  and,  consequently,  within 
its  scope  and  operation.  One  of  the  most  familiar  rules 
of  statutory  construction  is  that  general  words  must  be 
limited  to  the  particular  purpose  or  end  which  the  law- 
makers had  in  view.  They  must  be  understood  and  ap- 
plied in  the  special  sense  in  which  they  are  used  by  legis- 
lators. What  may  be  called  governmental  charity,  or 
charity  based  upon  public  taxation  and  administered  by 
a  system  of  statute  law,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
charity  that  moved  the  good  Samaritan  and  prompted  the 
widow's  mite.  The  power  of  visitation  and  regulation 
applies  to  those  institutions  administering  charity  of  the 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  465 

former  kind,  in  whole  or  in  part,  but  not  to  those  volun- 
tarily engaged  in  some  good  work  of  the  latter  character. 
They  are  left  by  the  State  to  manage  their  own  affairs  in 
their  own  way,  or,  at  all  events,  are  not  within  the  juris- 
diction of  the  State  Board  of  Charities.  That  jurisdiction 
can  then  be  defined  by  the  application  of  a  very  just 
and  simple  test.  If  the  particular  institution,  whether 
public  or  private,  receives  public  money  for  use  or  dis- 
tribution as  charity,  and  not  for  some  other  reason  and 
some  other  purpose,  that  institution  is  subject  to  visitation 
by  the  Board,  but  this  system  of  State  supervision  does 
not  extend  to  the  efforts  of  private  benevolence.  That 
may  flow  in  various  channels  not  subject  to  State  regula- 
tion, since  the  government  is  in  no  way  concerned  with 
it.'' 

Now,  the  opinion  is  quite  correct,  so  far  as  the  first 
sentence  refers  to  the  law  of  1867  (Chapter  951)  establish- 
ing the  State  Board  of  Charities ;  by  that  law  the  Board 
was  empowered  to  visit  and  inspect  only  institutions  re- 
ceiving State  'aid ;  but  what  explanation  is  there  of  the 
fact  that  the  decision  is  based  on  this  law,  which  was  in 
force  only  five  years,  and  practically  ignores  its  amend- 
ment twenty-seven  years  ago,  by  the  law  of  1873  (Chapter 
571),  empowering  the  Board  and  its  commissioners  to  visit 
all  institutions  receiving  State  aid,  or  maintained  by 
municipalities  or  otherwise,  and  further  ignores  the 
Constitution  of  1894  and  the  laws  of  1895  (Chapter  771) 
and  of  1896  (Chapter  546),  making  it  the  duty  of  the  Board 
to  visit  all  institutions,  enumerating  even  those  ''not  in- 
corporated,'' which  certainly  never  received  any  State 
aid?  It  is  no  light  matter  that  the  confidence  of  the 
2h 


466  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

public  in  the  intelligence  of  the  majority  of  the  judges  of 
its  highest  court  should  be  put  to  such  a  test. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 
New  York,  January  22,  1900. 

Moral  Deterioration  Following  War 

I  cannot  speak  on  this  subject  without  making  a  dis- 
tinction between  different  kinds  of  wars. 

A  war  which  requires  personal  sacrifice,  a  war  which 
makes  a  whole  people  place  patriotism  and  public  duty 
above  private  comfort  and  ease,  which  forces  men  and 
women  out  of  self-indulgent  devotion  to  material  wealth 
— such  a  war  does  not  as  a  whole  cause  moral  deterioration, 
but  on  the  contrary  moral  development  in  a  nation. 

Such  a  war  was  the  Civil  War  in  this  country  forty  years 
ago,  and  yet  even  that  war,  fought  for  noble  purposes, 
and  lifting  the  nation  in  some  ways  to  a  much  higher 
moral  plane  than  it  had  ever  reached  before,  even  that 
war  was  the  cause  of  moral  deterioration  in  many  individ- 
uals, and  dishonesty  and  recklessness  were  without  any 
doubt  fostered  by  it  among  the  people  at  large. 

But  if  that  is  unhappily  true  of  a  war  in  which  the  motives 
were  to  preserve  the  life  of  the  nation  and  to  free  from 
slavery  four  million  men  and  women,  what  can  be  said  of 
a  war  in  which  the  nation  makes  no  sacrifice,  does  not 
even  feel  the  weight  of  added  taxation,  goes  about  its 
own  selfish  business  and  its  own  selfish  pleasures  exactly 
as  if  not  in  any  sense  responsible  for  the  war  ?  Not  only 
can  no  moral  good  come  from  such  a  war,  but  great  moral 
evil  must  ensue. 


MISCELLANEOUS   PAPERS  467 

To  our  disgrace,  it  is  in  such  a  war  that  the  people  of  the 
United  States  are  now  engaged  in  the  Phihppine  Islands  ; 
and  I  shall  not  ask  you  and  the  promoters  of  this  meeting 
to  excuse  me  for  devoting  the  rest  of  my  time  to  a  con- 
sideration of  this  concrete  instance  of  the  ^^  Moral  Deteri- 
oration following  War/'  because  I  believe  it  could  not  be 
more  profitably  spent. 

The  history  of  the  introduction  of  the  United  States  to 
the  Philippine  Islands  is  a  disgraceful  one. 

In  April,  1898,  Admiral  Dewey  was  ordered  to  prepare 
to  take  Manila  from  the  Spaniards,  and  our  Consul  at  Hong 
Kong  arranged  with  him  that  a  young  Filipino  named 
Emilio  Aguinaldo,  who  had  been  at  the  head  for  one  or 
two  years  of  a  revolutionary  party  in  the  Philippines  fight- 
ing against  Spain,  but  who  at  that  time  was  resident  in 
Hong  Kong,  should  meet  him  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
Aguinaldo's  help,  and  that  of  his  former  co-revolutionists 
against  Spain.  A  friendly  agreement  was  entered  into  by 
Admiral  Dewey  and  Aguinaldo,  whereby  the  latter  was 
encouraged  and  aided  in  every  way  to  raise  and  equip  a 
FiUpino  army,  and  he  soon  had  from  fifteen  to  thirty 
thousand  men  assembled,  who  invested  Manila  on  the  land 
side,  while  the  Navy  of  the  United  States  besieged  it  from 
the  harbor.  A  revolutionary  government  was  proclaimed 
by  Aguinaldo,  who  declared  himself  Dictator,  but  who  also 
sent  out  orders  all  over  the  Philippine  Archipelago  to 
hold  elections,  the  result  of  which  was  that  a  legislative 
body  was  soon  assembled  at  Malolos,  thirty  miles  from 
Manila  ;  and  Aguinaldo  was  by  this  body  elected  President 
of  the  Filipino  Republic,  a  Filipino  flag  was  raised  and 


468  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

saluted  by  Dewey's  vessels,  and  the  Filipinos  were  filled  with 
enthusiasm  and  with  gratitude  towards  the  United  States. 

In  December,  1898,  however,  the  President  of  the  United 
States  proclaimed  sovereignty  over  the  Philippine  Archi- 
pelago. This  naturally  aroused  the  anger  of  the  Filipinos, 
who  had  been  treasuring  for  six  months  or  more  the  hope 
that  the  United  States  intended  to  help  and  protect  their 
young  republic  against  the  attacks  of  other  nations,  and 
the  feeling  became  more  and  more  bitter,  and  finally  cul- 
minated in  a  fight  between  the  outposts  of  the  two  armies 
on  February  4,  1899 ;  and  from  that  time  the  United 
States  devoted  itself  to  the  task  of  crushing  out  what  was 
called  the  insurrection  of  the  Filipinos. 

That  is,  the  United  States  having  obtained  a  foothold 
in  a  foreign  country  by  professing  friendship  for  the  in- 
habitants, calls  those  inhabitants  rebels  because  the  people 
resist  the  invasion  and  try  to  defend  their  country.  We 
direct  our  army  to  crush  out  all  resistance.  The  Filipino 
people  prefer  death  to  subjugation,  saying,  as  did 
Patrick  Henry,  the  American  patriot,  '^Give  me  liberty  or 
give  me  death."  Our  unhappy  army  set  to  do  such  an 
un-American,  such  a  wicked  task,  tries  to  obey  orders,  be- 
comes gradually  more  and  more  cruel.  I  cannot  do  better 
than  quote  the  account  of  President  Schurman,  who  was 
himself  a  United  States  Commissioner  there,  of  the 
gradual  moral  deterioration  of  our  Army  in  the  Philippines 
and  its  causes. 

[Then  Mrs.  Lowell  quotes  at  considerable  length  from  an 
article   published   in    The   Independent   under  the  title 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  469 

''The    Philippines    Again,"  presumably    by    President 
Schurman,  and  continues  :  ] 

It  is  incredible  that  the  American  people  should  have 
been  so  ignorant  and  so  careless  in  regard  to  the  great 
wrong  which  has  been  done  in  their  name ;  but  now  at 
last  we  are  awakening,  we  are  beginning  to  realize  the 
facts.  The  opposition  in  Congress,  with  the  help  of  such 
liberty-loving  RepubUcans  (all  honor  to  them  !)  as  Senator 
Hoar  of  Massachusetts,  Senator  Wellington  of  Maryland, 
Mr.  Littlefield  of  Maine,  and  Mr.  McCall  of  Massachusetts 
are  speaking  again  the  words  that  seem  natural  to  the 
men  of  our  country.  Now  at  last  the  question  must  be 
brought  before  the  country  at  the  next  Congressional 
election  ;  and  during  the  intervening  six  months  every  man 
and  every  woman  who  cares  not  only  for  the  liberty  of  the 
Filipinos,  but  for  the  liberty  of  the  United  States  of 
America,  should,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  press  this 
vital  matter  upon  the  indifferent,  until  they  must  in  self- 
defence  think  of  it,  and  make  up  their  minds  about  it. 
I  said  that  the  liberties  of  the  United  States  are  at  stake 
equally  with  the  liberties  of  the  FiUpino  people,  for  it  is 
inevitable  that  should  we  willingly  become  the  tyrants 
of  these  helpless  millions,  should  we  turn  our  backs  so 
completely  upon  the  principles  which  have  made  this 
country  a  world  power,  moulding  and  influencing  the 
character  of  all  the  governments  of  the  world  during  the 
past  hundred  and  twenty-five  years,  as  to  make  it  possible 
for  us  to  do  such  a  thing,  our  moral  deterioration  would 
be  so  rapid,  our  conscience  must  become  so  hardened  in  the 


470  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

process,  and  our  love  of  liberty  so  absolutely  dead,  that 
we  should  become  fit  subjects  for  a  tjnranny  ourselves. 
■  There  is  no  other  nation  upon  whom  so  dire  moral  injury 
could  be  inflicted,  for  there  is  no  other  which  has  so  pre- 
cious a  heritage  to  lose.  No  other  nation  has  ever  laid 
down  the  principle  that  all  men  are  equal,  or  that 
governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the  governed, 
or  that  taxation  without  representation  is  tyranny. 
To  ignore  these  principles  and  deny  them  by  their  acts 
would  not  therefore  scar  the  conscience  of  Englishmen, 
Frenchmen  or  Germans,  but  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  do 
such  things  and  preserve  the  moral  qualities  of  which  in 
past  years  we  have  been  most  proud. 

We  should  do  well  to  remember  the  words  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  in  1850,  the  man  who  as  President  twelve  years 
later  freed  four  million  slaves.  In  answer  to  an  invita- 
tion to  attend  a  celebration  in  honor  of  Jefferson,  the 
author  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  man  who 
first  said  "All  men  are  created  equal,''  Mr.  Lincoln 
wrote:  '^This  is  a  world  of  compensations,  and  he  who 
would  be  no  slave  must  consent  to  have  no  slave.  Those 
who  deny  freedom  to  others  deserve  it  not  for  them- 
selves, and  under  a  just  God  cannot  long  retain  it. 
All  honor  to  Jefferson ;  to  the  man  who,  in  the  concrete 
pressure  of  a  struggle  for  national  independence  by  a 
single  people,  had  the  coolness,  fprecast  and  capacity  to 
introduce  into  a  merely  revolutionary  document  an 
abstract  truth,  applicable  to  all  men  and  all  times,  and  so 
to  embalm  it  there  that  today,  and  in  all  coming  days,  it 
shall  be  a  rebuke  and  a  stumbling  block  to  the  very  har- 
bingers of  reappearing  tyranny  and  oppression." 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  471 


Booker  T.  Washington 


There  is  probably  not  an  intelligent  man  or  woman  in 
the  United  States  who  does  not  know  the  name  of  Booker 
T.  Washington ;  but  comparatively  few  of  us  know  how 
great  Mr.  Washington  really  is,  or  how  great  is  the  service 
he  is  rendering  to  both  blacks  and  whites.  For  the  inter- 
ests of  the  two  races  are  inextricably  bound  together. 
The  ten  milhons  of  colored  people  are  as  truly  and  vitally 
a  part  of  the  nation  as  are  any  other  ten  million  Americans ; 
if  they  suffer,  it  is  the  nation  that  suffers;  if  they  are 
degraded,  it  is  the  nation  that  is  degraded. 

The  only  sure  cure  for  the  evils  that  come  through  the 
brutal  and  degraded  members  of  the  negro  race  is  their 
moral  development,  just  as  the  only  cure  for  the  evils  that 
come  through  the  brutal  and  degraded  members  of  every 
other  race  is  that  they  shall  be  elevated  morally.  There- 
fore Mr.  Washington  is  one  of  the  greatest  living  bene- 
factors of  our  whole  people,  since  his  Hfe  is  devoted  to  the 
moral  elevation  of  thousands  who  are  struggUng  against 
tremendous  odds  to  grow  into  higher  and  nobler  men  and 
women,  who  in  their  turn  will  pass  on  to  others  the  light 
they  have  received. 

Last  spring  in  Virginia  we  heard  an  interesting  account 
of  the  inevitable  results  of  no  education  and  of  education 
among  the  colored  people  of  that  state.  In  one  of  the 
counties  in  the  neighborhood  of  Richmond,  the  resident 
physician  said  he  should  soon  move,  as  he  feared  for  the 

*  August  20,  1903.  Evidently  an  address  to  introduce  Mr.  Wash- 
ington. 


472  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

safety  of  his  family,  the  negroes  were  so  lawless  and 
vicious,  —  much  deteriorated,  he  thought,  since  the  aboli- 
tion of  slavery. 

Replying  to  this  Dr.  Frissell,  principal  of  Hampton, 
said  that  such  were  doubtless  the  facts  in  that  particular 
county,  for  there  had  been  but  few  schools  in  it,  and  very 
poor  ones,  but  that  he  could  show  the  doctor  many  coun- 
ties where  exactly  the  opposite  was  true ;  where  the  negroes 
had  much  improved  since  the  abolition  of  slavery,  and 
were  decent  law-abiding  men  and  women,  and  good 
citizens,  and  naturally  so,  for  in  those  counties  they  had 
had  good  schools,  and,  what  was  far  more  important,  good 
industrial  and  agricultural  training  for  the  people. 

And  this  reminds  me  that  we  owe  gratitude  to  Mr. 
Washington  not  only  for  his  invaluable  service  to  the  cause 
of  education  in  general,  for  he  shares  with  General  Arm- 
strong, who  taught  and  inspired  him,  and  whose  shining 
example  he  is  following,  the  credit  of  being  among  the  first 
educators  in  this  country  to  make  industrial  training  an 
essential  part  of  education. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  we  owe  the  practical 
demonstration  of  the  value  of  industrial  education,  which  is 
coming  more  and  more  to  be  considered  as  an  indispensable 
part  of  the  training  of  every  child,  to  the  efforts  of  these 
two  great  men  to  guide  the  bewildered  freedmen  up  from 
slavery,  and  to  fit  them  to  be  worthy  citizens  of  the 
Republic. 

But  I  will  keep  you  no  longer.  Mr.  Washington  has 
planned  and  created  and  controlled  a  great  educational 
institution  at  Tuskegee  in  Alabama;  but  besides  this 


MISCELLANEOUS  PAPERS  473 

stupendous  labor  he  is  obliged  also  to  perform  the  more 
trying  task  of  finding  the  money  wherewith  to  maintain 
and  extend  it.  In  both  these  fields  of  work  his  wife  is  his 
worthy  helpmate. 

Model  Tenements  for  Widows  with  Small  Children 

To  the  Editor  of  Charities  :^ 

I  have  often  wondered  that  no  one  thought  of  building 
Mills  Hotels  for  widows  with  small  children. 

The  lives  of  these  women  are  peculiarlj'^  hard,  in  that 
they  must  perform  the  part  of  both  father  and  mother, 
must  support  their  children  as  well  as  care  for  them. 

A  building  provided  with  day  nursery,  kindergarten, 
restaurant  and  laundry,  where  widows  could  have  their 
children  with  them  at  night,  and  leave  them  safe  in  the 
care  of  good  nurses  and  teachers  while  they  were  out  at 
work,  would  be  an  incalculable  blessing.  The  women 
could  probably  pay  at  least  enough  to  cover  all  expenses, 
while  similar  buildings  for  widowers  with  young  children 
would  no  doubt  be  a  good  investment. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 

To  the  Editor  of  Charities  :  ^ 

The  disapproval  of  my  plan  for  helping  widows  in  the 
care  of  their  children  expressed  by  your  correspondent 
X.  Y.  Z.  is  doubtless  due  to  my  mistake  in  speaking  of 
the  proposed  buildings  as  ^^  Mills  Hotels'^  instead  of  ^' Model 
Tenements,'^  for  I  do  not  contemplate  that  the  meals 
should  be  taken  in  common,  or  that  anything  approaching 
an  institution  should  be  estabUshed. 

On  the  contrary,  my  idea  is  that  each  widow  should  hire 
from  one  to  three  rooms  for  herself  and  her  children,  which 
1  Charities,  May  3,  1902.  ^  charities,  May  24,  1902. 


474  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

should  be  as  truly  their  own  home  as  the  rooms  in  any  ordi- 
nary tenement  house,  but  that  she  should  have  the  follow- 
ing advantages :  (1)  That,  when  she  goes  out  to  work  she 
should  be  able  to  place  her  children  in  a  day  nursery  or 
kindergarten  in  the  house,  instead  of  being  obliged  to  carry 
them  to  one  foiu'  or  five  blocks  away.  (2)  That,  before  go- 
ing and  on  returning  from  work,  and  on  Sundays,  she  should 
be  able  to  buy  the  family  meals  from  the  common  kitchen, 
instead  of  having  to  cook  them.  (3)  That  she  should  also 
be  able  to  have  her  washing  done  at  the  common  laundry, 
instead  of  taxing  her  own  small  strength  to  do  it. 

A  widow  in  such  a  Model  Tenement  would  thus  be  with 
her  children  when  she  is  not  obliged  to  be  absent  earning 
their  support,  and  she  would  have  the  necessary  assistance 
in  her  home  duties,  which  no  working  woman  can  ade- 
quately perform  without  entirely  overtaxing  her  strength. 
The  strain  put  upon  widows  who  support  their  children  is 
more  than  human  beings  should  be  required  to  bear. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
Work  for  Civil  Service  Reform 


On  Thanksgiving  Day,  1856,  George  William  Curtis/ 
who  had  the  year  before  delighted  American  readers  with 
his  '^Prue  and  I/'  and  was  then  in  his  thirty-third  year, 
married  Anna  Shaw  and  went  to  Hve  with  the  Shaws  at 
their  residence  on  Staten  Island.  At  that  time,  Effie^  as 
Josephine  was  called  by  her  [family  and  intimate  friends, 
was  thirteen.  The  influence  of  Curtis'  personality  upon 
the  expanding  mind  of  his  little  sister-in-law  was  far-reach- 
ing. Sensitive,  inteUigent,  energetic,  and  patriotic  by 
nature,  she  must  have  been  stimulated  in  her  mental 
growth  by  intimate  association  with  one  of  the  most 
cultivated  and  useful  public  men  of  his  generation. 
Too  much  stress  cannot  be  laid,  in  estimating  the  causes 
which  produced  the  wonderful  woman  Mrs.  Lowell  after- 
wards became,  upon  the  influence  of  her  brother-in-law; 
she  must  literally  have  sat  at  his  feet.     In  the  diary 

*For  many  of  the  facts  relating  to  George  William  Cm-tis  I  am 
Indebted  to  his  life  by  Edward  Gary,  published  in  1894  in  the  series 
of  i*  American  Men  of  Letters." 

475 


476  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

which  she  kept  in  1861  and  1862,  she  mentions  that  George 
read  his  paper  aloud,  and  that  it  was  ^^ splendid." 

Mr.  Curtis  went  as  a  supporter  of  the  candidacy  for  the 
presidential  nomination  of  Governor  Seward  to  the 
Republican  National  Convention  of  1860  which  nomi- 
nated Lincoln.  When  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  he  de- 
voted his  time  and  thought  to  the  cause  of  the  Union  in 
the  press,  and  in  1863,  when  the  war  was  half  fought,  be- 
came editor  of  Harper^s  Weekly,  and  continued  in  control 
of  the  editorial  policy  of  that  influential  paper  until  his 
death  in  1892.  During  all  the  years  of  his  direction  of 
that  jom-nal,  he  resided  near  the  Shaws  on  Staten  Island. 
How  much  pleasure  and  instruction  Mrs.  Lowell,  who 
married  the  same  year  Mr.  Curtis^  long  editorship  began, 
and  retained  her  residence  with  her  father's  family,  must 
have  derived  from  hearing  the  policies  of  Harper's  famil- 
iarly discussed  at  the  fireside  at  that  critical  period  of 
our  history  !  No  wonder  that  in  later  years  it  was  easy 
for  her  to  write  to  the  press  on  pubHc  questions  and  to 
feel  at  home  in  the  company  of  newspaper  men,  many  of 
whom  she  numbered  among  her  friends. 

Mr.  Cary,  in  his  Hfe  of  Curtis,  already  mentioned,  gives 
two  quotations  from  his  letters  which  make  touching 
wartime  mention  of  relatives  and  friends  referred  to  in 
Josephine  Shaw's  diary. 

20  April,  1861. 
Anna  and  the  baby  are  perfectly  well.     Her  brother 
Rob  and  my  brother  Sam  marched  yesterday  with  their 
regiment,  the  7th,  both  the  Winthrops,  Philip  Schuyler, 
and  the  flower  of  the  youth  of  the  city. 


^^^^^^^^^^f'  ;#        ^^^^^^1 

■ 

1 

C^i^ 

^^^^^^^^^^H 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^B^^'^''  ''^"  '-^^1 

^pf'''^'''^B 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Bl^"^^-'' ' '  ^^^1 

^^j 

^^^^^^1 

^H 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS 


WORK   FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        477 

April,  1865. 
Here  upon  the  mantel  are  the  portraits  of  the  three 
boys  who  went  out  of  this  room,  my  brother,  Theodore 
Winthrop  and  Robbie  Shaw.  They  are  all  dead,  the 
brave  darlings,  and  now  I  put  the  head  of  the  dear  Chief 
among  them.  I  feel  that  every  drop  of  my  blood,  and 
thought  of  my  mind,  and  affection  of  my  heart,  is  conse- 
crated to  secure  the  work  made  holy,  and  forever  impera- 
tive, by  so  untold  a  sacrifice.  May  God  keep  us  all  as 
true  as  they  were  ! 

The  war  over,  other  questions  than  those  of  union  or 
disunion,  freedom  or  slavery,  now  forever  settled,  began 
to  engross  the  attention  of  the  people.  Among  these 
was  civil  service  reform,  in  advocating  which  Mr.  Curtis 
with  voice  and  pen  became  a  leader.  He  attacked  the 
evils  of  the  spoils  system,  and  organized  a  crusade  which 
assumed  national  importance  for  the  establishment  in 
our  public  service  of  as  high  a  standard  as  was  already 
attained  in  England.  Under  the  provisions  of  a  clause 
of  the  Sundry  Civil  Appropriation  Act  of  March  3, 1871, 
President  Grant  was  authorized  to  appoint  a  commission 
to  inquire  what  rules  and  regulations  for  admission  to 
the  public  service  which  the  President  could  enforce  under 
existing  laws  would  best  promote  its  efficiency.  The 
President  nominated  Mr.  Curtis  to  membership  in  this 
commission  of  seven,  on  March  4,  1871.  He  accepted 
the  nomination,  and  was  at  once  made  Chairman.  ^^Mr. 
Curtis'  real  object  in  undertaking  this  work,''  says  Mr. 
Gary,  ^'was  the  abolition  of  the  spoils  system,  abuses 
under  which  he  had  already  been  studying  for  several 
years." 


478  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

In  the  first  report  of  this  commission,  submitted  Decem- 
ber 18,  1871,  Mr.  Curtis  said  :  ''In  obedience  to  this  sys- 
tem, the  whole  machinery  of  the  government  is  pulled  to 
pieces  every  four  years,''  and  that  the  object  of  the  com- 
mission was  ''to  drive  politics  out  of  the  civil  service  and 
to  drive  patronage  out  of  pohtics.''  The  commission  sub- 
mitted, and  the  President  approved,  the  rules  for  com- 
petitive examinations,  and  completed  its  work  with 
their  promulgation  April  16,  1872. 

Mr.  Curtis  was  a  born  reformer,  and  his  abilities  as  a 
leader  were  always  recognized.  When  the  New  York  Civil 
Service  Reform  Association  was  organized  in  1880,  he  was 
elected  President,  a  position  which  he  held  until  his  death, 
and  in  1881,  he  was,  by  common  consent,  chosen  the  first 
President  of  the  National  Civil  Service  Reform  League. 
So  engrossed  did  he  become  in  the  promotion  of  this  reform, 
and  his  other  public  educational  work,  that  during  the 
administration  of  President  Hayes  he  twice  declined  the 
coveted  honor  of  representing  his  country  at  the  Court 
of  St.  James.  "I  have  been  told,"  said  Mr.  E.  S.  Nadal, 
in  an  article  on  "Our  Representatives  in  London,"  ^  "that 
he  declined  solely  because  he  did  not  wish  to  relinquish  the 
work  he  was  doing  at  home."  His  interest  in  the  reform 
of  the  civil  service  was  sustained  without  interruption 
until  his  death  in  1892  at  his  Staten  Island  home. 

Not  long  after  the  assassination  of  President  Garfield 
by  a  disappointed  spoils  seeker,  enraged  because  of  a 
question  of  party  patronage,  a  bill  for  the  reform  of  the 
civil   service,  which   had   been    introduced   by   Senator 

^  Century  Magazine^  July,  1909. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        479 

George  H.  Pendleton  of  Ohio,  was  passed  by  Congress, 
and  signed  by  President  Arthur,  January  16,  1883.  All 
appointments  to  the  national  civil  service  were  made 
subject  to  the  provisions  of  this  bill,  which  became  opera- 
tive July  16,  1883.  Curtis  and  his  allied  reformers  had 
won  a  notable  victory. 

Among  Mrs.  LowelFs  papers  there  are  a  few  letters 
which  relate  to  the  subject  of  civil  service  reform.  The 
following  extract  from  one  dated  January?,  1883,  addressed 
to  her  sister-in  law,  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  refers  to  the 
first  election  of  President  Cleveland,  a  friend  of  the  re- 
form: 

Dear  Annie  : 

Two  months  today  since  we  lost  Papa,  and  two  months 
since  the  wonderful  election  which  would  have  so  delighted 
him,  if  he  could  only  have  known  of  it.  He  was  intensely 
interested  in  the  reform  movement,  and  one  of  the  last 
things  he  said  on  Monday  was  that  he  wanted  to  see  the 
Posty  "  to  find  out  what  the  probabilities  of  the  election 
were."  You  know  how  it  went — a  perfect  revolution,  and 
the  result  has  been  most  wonderful.  The  Civil  Service 
Reform  bill  which  George  and  his  Association  prepared  and 
have  been  working  for  for  a  year,  and  which  was  sneered 
at  and  laughed  at  last  winter,  has  now  been  passed  by  the 
very  same  Congress  by  great  majorities  in  both  Houses  ! 
It  is  a  wonderful  triumph,  and  Father  would  have  been 
perfectly  deUghted  with  it.  Poor  Garfield's  death  has 
had  a  wonderful  effect  in  opening  people's  eyes  —  if  he 
had  lived,  we  never  should  have  got  on  so  fast. 

Other  work  occupied  Mrs.  Lowell's  busy  days,  and  it 
was  not  until  1894  that  she  gave  active  attention  to  this 


480  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

subject.  In  that  year,  Carl  Schurz,  who  succeeded 
Mr.  Curtis  as  President  of  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Asso- 
ciation of  New  York  State,  called  on  Mrs.  Lowell  and  in- 
duced her  to  form  a  Women's  Auxiliary  to  the  Association. 
The  meeting  for  organization  was  held  on  Mrs.  LowelFs 
call  in  May,  1895,  at  the  residence  of  Bishop  Henry  C. 
Potter,  10  Washington  Square.  Mrs.  William  H.  Schieffe- 
lin.  President  of  theAuxiUary,  says  that  Mrs.  Lowell  re- 
fused an  election  as  President,  giving  the  reason  that  peo- 
ple were  tired  of  seeing  her  name  in  print.  She  consented, 
however,  to  serve  as  Vice  President,  and  was  also  Chairman 
of  the  Executive  Committee.  Mrs.  Lowell's  pen  was  busily 
engaged  for  the  Auxiliary  in  its  formative  period;  she 
framed  the  constitution,  and  in  1900  she  suggested  the 
plan  of  holding  annual  competitions  for  prizes  for  essays 
on  civil  service  reform  subjects,  restricted  to  the  women 
members  of  the  clubs  in  the  State  Federations,  or  in  the 
general  Federation  in  states  having  no  State  Federations. 
The  papers  for  the  first  three  annual  competitions  —  those 
of  1901,  1902,  and  1903  —  were  prepared  by  Mrs.  Lowell, 
and  the  essays  were  sent  to  her.  The  judges  of  the  first 
competition  were  Charles  J.  Bonaparte  of  Baltimore,  Lu- 
cius B.  Swift  of  Indianapolis,  and  Mrs.  Lowell.  The 
winner  of  the  first  prize  on  this  occasion,  one  hundred 
dollars  in  cash,  was  Marion  Couthouy  Smith,  of  the 
Women's  Club  of  Orange,  New  Jersey. 

The  second  competition,  which  was  open  to  women  at 
large,  was  judged  in  1902  by  George  McAneny,  Mrs. 
Lowell,  and  Miss  A.  J.  Perkins.  The  winner,  Annie 
Jackson   Evans,  belonged  to  the  New  York   Branch  of 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL   SERVICE  REFORM        481 

the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae.  Pupils  of  the 
New  York  and  Brooklyn  public  high  schools  contended 
for  the  prizes  offered  in  the  third  competition  held  in  1903, 
in  which  the  winner  was  Joseph  H.  Kohan,  student  in  the 
Commercial  High  School  of  Brooklyn,  who  shortly  after- 
wards won  a  scholarship  in  Harvard  University.  The 
prize  essays  are  published  in  pamphlet  form  by  the  Auxili- 
ary, and  the  annual  competitions  are  still  held. 

A  seal  for  the  Women's  Auxiliary  was  designed  by  Miss 
Frances  Grimes,  a  pupil  of  Saint  Gaudens,  according  to 
suggestions  made  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  who  also  chose  the 
motto,  ^'The  best  shall  serve  the  State.''  This  seal 
reduced  in  size,  is  used  on  the  paper  of  the  Women's 
Auxiliary,  and  medals  of  gold,  silver,  and  bronze  have 
been  struck  to  be  given  as  prizes  for  essays  on  topics  of 
government  administration.  It  appears  at  the  head  of 
this  chapter. 

The  cause  of  civil  service  reform  was  also  advanced  by 
Mrs.  Lowell  through  her  membership  in  the  New  York 
State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs.  In  1900,  at  her 
suggestion,  a  committee  of  five  was  appointed  to  study 
the  subject  and  report  ways  in  which  individual  clubs 
might  further  the  reform.  This  was  afterwards  consti- 
tuted a  standing  committee  of  the  Federation  under  Mrs. 
Lowell's  chairmanship.  She  wrote  the  reports  of  this 
committee  for  the  years  1903  and  1904,  and  herself  pre- 
sented and  read  the  first  of  these  at  the  annual  meeting 
held  in  Utica.  Both  these  reports  were  published  in 
pamphlet  form.  The  close  of  1904  found  Mrs.  Lowell  still 
at  work  for  this  cause  in  the  Federation. 
2i 


482  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

So  much  for  details ;  but  Mrs.  LowelPs  larger  work  was 
the  preparation  of  a  series  of  papers  under  different  titles 
on  the  evils  of  the  spoils  system,  and  the  urgent  need  of 
the  general  adoption  of  civil  service  regulations  in  this 
country,  which  she  read  at  mass  meetings,  or  other  public 
gatherings,  both  in  New  York  and  other  states.  A  list  of 
all  known  to  me  is  given  in  the  index ;  some  of  the  more 
important  are,  in  whole  or  in  part,  included  in  this  chapter. 
All  were  written  within  the  decade  1896-1905.  In  the 
selection  of  the  papers  here  published,  I  have  had  the 
benefit  of  the  advice  of  Hon.  George  McAneny,^  for  many 
years  a  leader  in  the  reform. 

Of  the  paper  entitled  ^^The  Reform  of  the  Civil  Service 
and  the  Spoils  System,''  Mr.  McAneny  writes  :  ^'The  first 
in  the  series,  which  bears  the  date  of  December  30,  1896, 
and  which,  I  believe,  was  given  as  the  concluding  number 
in  a  course  of  papers  on  Civil  Service  Reform  at  the  Berke- 
ley Lyceum,  I  regard  as  one  of  the  best  presentations  of 
the  theory  of  the  reform  that  has  ever  been  given  anywhere. 
The  other  lecturers  in  that  Lyceum  course,  I  remember^ 
were  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Charles  J.  Bonaparte,  Richard 
Henry  Dana,  John  R.  Proctor,  then  United  States  Civil 
Service  Commissioner,  Herbert  Welsh,  and  myself." 

The  last  paper  Mrs.  Lowell  ever  wrote  was  her  report  as 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  of 
the  New  York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  finished 
shortly  before  her  death,  and  presented  in  her  behalf 
two  weeks  after  she  had  passed  away,  by  Miss  Miriam 

1  President  of  the  Borough  of  Manhattan  of  the  City  of  New  York^ 
1910. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE   REFORM        483 

Mason  Greeley,  at  the  Eleventh  Annual  Meeting  held 
October  30-November  3,  1905.  So  dear  was  the  cause 
of  the  reform  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  that  as  she  lay  on  her  death- 
bed, she  wrote  in  pencil  on  a  pad  the  names  of  women  she 
hoped  might  be  persuaded  to  join  the  Women's  Auxiliary. 
This  list  was  found  afterward,  and  because  of  it  nearly 
all  whose  names  it  bore  joined  the  Auxiliary. 

The  Reform  of  the  Civil  Service  and  the   Spoils 

System  ^ 

The  Civil  Service  is  defined  in  the  dictionary  to  mean 
'Hhe  body  of  persons  in  the  pay  of  the  State,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  naval  and  military  services." 

The  reform  of  the  Civil  Service,  then,  is  a  very  com- 
prehensive reform,  since  it  must  include  the  reform  of 
the  whole  machinery  of  the  United  States  Government, 
besides  that  of  all  the  State  Governments,  and  the  hun- 
dreds of  City  and  County  Governments  of  the  country,  in 
which  are  employed  approximately  six  hundred  thousand 
persons,  as  follows : 

In  the  United  States  Government,  two  hundred  thou- 
sand. In  the  State,  City  and  County  Governments,  about 
four  hundred  thousand. 

That  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Association  recognized 
that  they  were  aiming  at  a  fundamental  reform  is  proved 
by  the  language  of  the  second  article  of  their  Constitution, 
in  which  it  is  stated  that  ''The  object  of  the  Association 

^  A  paper  read  to  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the  Civil  Service  Reform 
Association  and  the  League  for  Political  Education,  December  30, 1896, 
and  published  in  pamphlet  form. 


484  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

shall  be  to  establish  a  system  of  appointment,  promotion, 
and  removal  in  the  Civil  Service,  founded  on  the  principle 
that  public  office  is  a  pubhc  trust,  admission  to  which 
should  depend  upon  proven  fitness,  and  the  Association 
will  advocate  all  other  appropriate  measures  for  securing 
integrity,  intelligence,  efficiency,  good  order,  and  due 
discipline  in  the  Civil  Service/' 

But  why,  an  innocent  person  might  naturally  ask,  should 
it  have  been  necessary  in  1877,  nearly  one  hundred  years 
after  the  United  States  Government  had  been  founded  by 
some  of  the  best  and  greatest  men  the  world  ever  saw,  — 
why  should  it  have  been  necessary  for  a  few  private  citizens 
to  form  an  association  to  secure  integrity,  intelligence, 
efficiency,  good  order,  and  due  discipline  in  the  Civil 
Service  of  this  country,  when  these  qualities  would  seem 
to  be  a  matter  of  course,  or  at  least  would  seem  to  be  the 
first  business  of  the  men  elected  to  the  control  of  the 
Federal,  State,  and  City  Governments ;  for  how  could  any 
of  the  ends  for  which  these  governments  were  established 
and  carried  on  be  attained,  without  integrity,  intelligence, 
efficiency,  good  order,  and  due  discipline?  Or  again, 
why  should  the  Civil  Service  need  to  be  reformed  any  more 
than  the  Naval  and  Military  Service? 

To  answer  the  last  question  first.  The  Naval  and 
MiUtary  Services  were  protected  from  the  deterioration 
which  befell  the  Civil  Service  by  the  fact  that  a  severe  train- 
ing was  required  at  the  West  Point  and  AnnapoHs  Acad- 
emies before  an  appointment  could  be  received ;  and  con- 
sequently we  never  had  in  our  army  or  navy  the  condition 
described  by  Macaulay  as  existing  in  the  English  Navy 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL   SERVICE   REFORM        485 

under  Charles  II.  He  says  that  at  that  time  high  naval 
commands  were  distributed  ''among  landsmen  who,  even 
on  land,  could  not  safely  have  been  put  in  any  important 
trust.  Any  lad  of  noble  birth,  any  dissolute  courtier  for 
whom  one  of  the  King's  mistresses  might  speak  a  word, 
might  hope  that  a  ship  of  the  line,  and  with  it  the  honor 
of  the  country,  and  the  lives  of  hundreds  of  brave  men, 
would  be  committed  to  his  care.  It  mattered  not  that 
he  had  never  in  his  life  taken  a  voyage,  that  he  could 
not  keep  his  feet  in  a  breeze,  that  he  did  not  know  the  dif- 
ference between  latitude  and  longitude."  And  Macaulay 
adds:  ''The  same  interest  which  had  placed  him  in  a 
post  for  which  he  was  unfit,  maintained  him  there." 

The  answer  to  the  first  question  is  a  much  longer  one. 
The  same  corrupt  condition  which  Macaulay  describes 
as  existing  in  the  Navy  existed  also  in  the  Civil  Service  in 
England  at  that  time,  and  for  many  years  later,  and  it  was 
by  no  means  a  new  evil  in  that  country  or  elsewhere ;  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  one  of  the  very  oldest.  The  use  of 
the  public  offices  for  the  benefit,  not  of  the  people,  but 
of  the  Emperor,  King,  Duke,  or  for  the  benefit  of  whoever 
had  the  power  to  use  them  to  strengthen  himself  and 
his  party,  was  the  common  way  in  which  tyranny  ex- 
hibited itself,  or  rather  it  was  the  very  essence  of  tyranny. 
'^  L'etat,  c'est  moi,"  meant  indeed  that  there  were  no  public 
offices  at  all,  but  that  they  all  were  the  private  property 
of  the  King,  and  that  the  people,  although  they  had  to  pay 
taxes  to  support  the  officers  appointed  at  the  King's 
pleasure,  had  no  authority  or  right  in  regard  to  them. 

The  founders  of  our  RepubUc  knew  this ;  they  knew 


486  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  all  the  nations  of  history  had  suffered  from  oppression, 
from  extortion,  and  from  manifold  other  evils  resulting 
from  the  abuse  of  the  appointing  power  by  their  rulers, 
but  they  provided  no  safeguards  against  this  abuse  because 
unfortunately,  they  ascribed  it,  not  to  human  nature,  weak 
when  exposed  to  the  temptations  of  power,  but  to  the 
monarchical  and  aristocratic  form  of  government,  and 
they  believed  that  a  government  that  was  democratic  even 
to  so  limited  an  extent  as  the  one  they  established  would 
be  protected  against  these  especial  evils  by  its  verj^  form. 
Madison  said  in  Congress,  during  General  Washington's 
administration,  that  any  president  who  should  remove  a 
competent  officer  for  political  reasons  would  be  impeached. 

The  Fathers  of  the  Republic  were  sure  that  the  people 
would  guard  their  own  interests  when  they  had  the  power 
to  do  so.  They  overlooked  the  fact  that  private  interests 
in  contest  with  public  interests  are  apt  to  conquer,  because 
they  are  supported  by  concentrated  and  individual  effort, 
while  the  efforts  opposed  to  them  are  apt  to  be  scattered 
and  far  less  intense. 

For  this  reason  they  failed  in  the  Constitution  to  protect 
the  new  government  from  the  old  evils ;  and  the  old  evils 
crept  in  and  assumed  even  exactly  the  old  shapes  so  well 
known  in  history. 

For  the  spoils  system  so  well  known,  alas,  to  us  also, 
is  only  the  old  tyranny,  with  the  party  put  in  place  of  the 
King. 

Spoilsmen  repeat  Louis  XIV's  assertion,  but  instead 
of  saying  '^L'etat,  c'est  moi,"  they  say,  '^To  the  victors 
belong  the  spoils."     In  each  case  the  people,  who  pay  the 


WORK   FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        487 

taxes,  are  ignored,  and  the  offices  are  used  for  the  benefit, 
not  of  the  people,  but  of  individuals  and  factions.  In  the 
old  times  and  in  the  old  countries  the  individuals  benefited 
used  to  be  the  King  and  his  favorites,  while  in  these  new 
times  and  in  this  new  country,  it  is  the  party  in  power 
and  its  favorites  who  are  benefited,  and  therefore,  the  evil 
is  far  greater  ;  for  whereas  the  corruption  used  to  be  con- 
fined to  a  small  number  of  men  closely  connected  with  the 
King,  with  us  it  has  eaten  into  the  character  of  the  people 
itself.  There  were,  comparatively,  only  a  few  persons  in 
a  monarchy  who  felt  the  fatal  effects  of  the  bribery  of 
public  office,  for  it  was  only  a  few  who  had  any  chance 
of  being  rewarded  for  unworthy  political  work  by  an  ap- 
pointment, but  here,  in  both  parties,  the  men  who  will 
serve  the  party  without  conscience  may  all  hope  at  least 
for  the  reward,  and  the  moral  evil  is  proportionately  more 
hideous. 

Of  the  many  evils  which  follow  the  adoption  of  the  spoils 
system  I  will  enumerate  only  a  few.  It  demoralizes  the 
whole  mass  of  the  people  by  teaching  them  that  honest 
work  and  conscientious  devotion  to  duty  are  not  the  road 
to  success  in  the  United  States;  it  degrades  the  public 
officers  themselves,  who,  whether  honest  and  conscientious 
or  not,  have  to  depend  on  the  personal  and  political  favor 
of  this  or  that  person  to  retain  their  offices ;  it  causes 
inefficiency  and  extravagance  in  the  service,  because  of 
the  changes  of  officers  consequent  upon  the  ''clean  sweep '^ 
which  follows  a  change  of  administration;  it  brings  dis- 
grace and  loss  to  the  nation  abroad  by  reason  of  the  ap- 
pointment of  men  as  consuls,  and  even  as  foreign  ministers, 


488  ^  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

not  because  they  are  fitted  to  fill  the  honorable  places  into 
which  they  are  forced,  but  because  they  have  proved  them- 
selves adroit  political  managers  and  wire-pullers,  or,  in 
other  words,  have  proved  themselves  unfit  to  fill  any 
public  place ;  and  it  creates  a  fearful  danger  to  the  liber- 
ties of  the  people  at  home  because  of  the  encroachments 
made  possible  by  the  action  of  venal  legislative  bodies 
bribed  to  betray  the  people  by  corrupt  combinations 
of  capital,  the  election  of  such  men  to  our  legislative 
bodies  being  made  possible  by  the  use  of  ofiices  as  party 
rewards. 

At  first,  so  far  as  regarded  the  Federal  service,  the 
founders  of  the  Repubhc  seemed  justified  in  their  hopes. 
For  more  than  a  generation  the  government  of  the  United 
States  was  probably  the  purest  that  had  ever  been  known ; 
only  fit  men  were  appointed  to  office,  and  no  one  was 
removed  for  political  or  personal  reasons,  but  during  all 
that  time  the  poison  of  the  spoils  system,  nurtured  by 
Aaron  Burr  and  Tammany  Hall,  was  at  work  in  this 
unhappy  State,  which  has  been  politically  corrupt  almost 
from  the  moment  of  its  birth ;  and  finally  the  fatal  virus 
spread  to  the  nation  itself.  That  the  beginnings  of  danger 
were  recognized  is  amply  proved  by  the  warning  voices 
that  were  raised,  long  before  the  evils  themselves  had 
assumed  any  very  great  proportions. 

From  many  I  select  only  two.  In  1832  Van  Buren's 
nomination  as  Minister  to  England  was  opposed  by  Web- 
ster, Calhoun  and  Clay,  because  of  his  attempts  to  per- 
suade the  President  to  adopt  the  "  New  York  system  of 
party  removals.'' 


WORK   FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        489 

"It  is  a  detestable  system/'  cried  Henry  Clay,  ''drawn 
from  the  worst  periods  of  the  Roman  Republic,  and  if  it 
were  to  be  perpetuated,  if  the  offices,  honors,  and 
dignities  of  the  people  were  to  be  put  up  to  a  scramble, 
and  to  be  decided  by  the  results  of  every  Presidential 
election,  our  government  and  institutions,  becoming 
intolerable,  would  finally  end  in  a  despotism  as  inexorable 
as  that  of  Constantinople/' 

In  1840  Horace  Bushnell  said : 

"Only  conceive  such  a  lure  held  out  to  this  great  peo- 
ple, and  all  the  Uttle  offices  of  the  Government  thus  set 
up  for  the  price  of  victory,  without  regard  to  merit  or 
anything  but  party  service,  and  you  have  a  spectacle  of 
baseness  and  rapacity  such  as  was  never  seen  before.  No 
preaching  of  the  Gospel  in  our  land,  no  parental  disci- 
pline, no  schools,  not  all  the  machinery  of  virtue  together, 
can  long  be  a  match  for  the  corrupting  power  of  our  po- 
litical strifes,  actuated  by  such  a  law  as  this.  It  would 
make  us  a  nation  of  apostates  at  the  foot  of  Sinai.  .  .  .'' 

What  is  the  remedy  ?  The  disease  is  plain.  How  can 
it  be  cured?  First  by  the  reform  of  the  whole  Civil 
Service ;  by  the  destruction  of  the  great  bribery  fund, 
consisting  of  the  salaries  of  the  six  hundred  thousand 
offices,  amounting  to  at  least  three  hundred  million  dollars, 
which,  for  three  generations,  has  been  used  to  corrupt  our 
people ;  the  removal  from  the  domain  of  politics  of  these 
six  hundred  thousand  offices,  from  heads  of  departments 
in  the  United  States  Government  to  the  woman  who  cleans 
the  station  house  in  a  country  village;  the  honest  and 
energetic  enforcement  of  the  principle  that  a  pubhc 
officer  is  appointed  to  do  public  work,  and  that,  so  long 


490  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

as  he  does  that  work  well,  the  public  will  keep  him  in  his 
place ;  that  is,  by  the  substitution  of  the  ''Merit  System'' 
for  the ''Spoils  System." 

This  is  being  slowly  carried  out  by  the  passage  and  en- 
forcement of  United  States  and  State  laws,  requiring  that 
appointments  to  subordinate  executive  offices  shall  be 
made  from  persons  whose  fitness  has  been  ascertained  by 
competitive  examinations  open  to  all  applicants  properly 
qualified.  But  it  sometimes  seems  as  if  this  Civil  Service 
Heform,  this  simple  device  of  guarding  the  entrance  to 
the  public  service  by  examinations,  were  a  very  inefficient 
and  a  very  inadequate  weapon  for  accomplishing  the  great 
reforms  which  must  be  accomplished  if  the  honor  of  our 
countr}^,  if  the  morality  of  our  country  and  of  our  in- 
dividual citizens  are  to  be  saved. 

But  as  the  evil  came  about  through  the  misuse  of  the 
petty  offices  as  a  means  of  bribing  men  to  support  this  or 
that*<;andidate  or  party,  so  the  beginning  of  the  rooting 
out  of  the  evil  must  be  in  rescuing  the  petty  offices  from 
this  misuse.  We  must  then  turn  to  the  Civil  Service 
laws,  whether  Federal  or  State,  to  make  the  beginning 
of  reform ;  and  the  way  in  which  these  laws  are  carried 
into  practice  is  the  following : 

A  central  body,  called  the  Federal,  or  the  State,  or  the 
City  Civil  Service  Commission,  as  the  case  may  be,  has 
the  direction  and  control  of  the  applications  and  examina- 
tions of  candidates  for  positions  in  the  Civil  Service,  or  in 
that  part  of  it  which  has  been  classified,  as  the  term  is, 
that  is,  which  has  been  brought  under  the  law ;  but  this 
body  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  appointments. 


WORK   FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        491 

It  receives  the  applications  of  those  desiring  to  enter  an 
examination,  and  requires  that  these  applications  shall  be 
accompanied  by  the  written  recommendation  of  three  or 
fom-  reputable  persons  who  know  the  appUcant ;  and  if 
these  are  satisfactory,  he  or  she  is  summoned  to  take  part 
in  the  competitive  examination  of  candidates  for  the  posi- 
tion sought.  This  examination  is  in  writing,  and  is  care- 
fully prepared  to  show  the  general  attainments  of  the  com- 
petitors, and  in  each  case  also  to  show  his  or  her  especial 
fitness  for  the  particular  position  in  question.  The  names 
of  candidates  are  not  known  to  the  examiners  who  mark 
the  papers;  and  from  these  marks  an  eUgible  list  is 
made  up,  the  candidates'  names  appearing  upon  it  in  the 
order  of  their  standing.  The  Commission  also  makes 
private  inquiries  of  the  references  concerning  the  applicant 
and  whatever  further  character  investigation  seems  to 
be  necessary,  and  if  anything  transpires  during  this 
character  investigation  to  show  that  the  applicant  is  in- 
eligible for  the  position  he  seeks,  he  is  not  put  on  the  list. 
When  the  head  of  any  department  wants  to  fill  a  vacancy 
or  vacancies,  he  sends  to  the  Civil  Service  Commission 
for  names,  stating  how  many  vacancies  there  are ;  the  rule 
as  to  the  number  of  names  to  be  sent  in  for  each  vacancy 
differs  in  the  different  services,  but  in  this  city  there  are 
two  extra  names  sent  in ;  that  is,  three  for  one  vacancy, 
four  for  two,  five  for  three,  etc.,  to  allow  the  appointing 
officer  some  latitude  of  selection. 

The  men  appointed  under  the  Civil  Service  law  are  re- 
ceived on  probation  only  for  six  months,  as  it  is  recognized 
that  a  man  might  pass  a  good  examination  and  yet  not 


492  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

be  practically  a  good  officer.  No  one,  therefore,  is  finally 
appointed,  until  he  has  proved  his  fitness  by  a  six  months' 
trial. 

You  will  see  that  this  system  is  a  very  good  one,  if 
honestly  carried  out,  and  that  the  separation  of  the  ex- 
amining from  the  appointing  power  tends  to  secure  honesty, 
for  in  order  that  dishonest  appointments  shall  be  made  it 
is  necessary  that  there  be  collusion  between  the  examin- 
ing department  and  the  other  departments  of  the  govern- 
ment. Nevertheless,  during  several  years  of  Tammany 
rule  in  this  city,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  we  had 
a  Civil  Service  Commission  with  some  reputable  men  as 
commissioners :  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  competitive 
examinations  were  held  and  that  nominally  the  Civil  Ser- 
vice law  was  carried  out,  and  appointments  were  made 
from  the  names  appearing  on  the  eligible  lists  furnished 
to  the  heads  of  departments  by  the  Civil  Service  Com- 
mission ;  yet  the  whole  system  was  rotten  and  the  heads 
of  departments  '^got  the  men  they  wanted,"  and  every- 
body knew  it. 

No  system  is  good  if  dishonestly  applied;  and  unless 
competitive  examinations  are  open  to  all  and  are  fairly 
held,  and  unless  the  men  who  pass  the  highest  receive 
the  appointments,  the  whole  system  is,  of  course,  a 
sham,  and  adds  hypocrisy  to  the  other  evils  of  the  spoils 
system. 

What  we  want  then,  is,  first,  a  real  reform  of  the  Civil 
Service,  an  honest  system,  honestly  carried  out.  W^e 
want  our  Civil  Service,  National,  State,  and  Municipal,  to 
be  filled  by  men  who  have  been  tested  by  competitive 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE   REFORM        493 

examinations  and  by  a  probationary  period  of  service, 
and  from  whose  appointments  all  question  of  personal  or 
party  favor  has  been  absolutely  eliminated. 

But  this  is  not  enough.  The  evil  originated  with  politi- 
cal corruption,  but  it  has  not  stopped  there ;  in  the  nature 
of  things  it  could  not.  A  nation  which  for  three  genera- 
tions has  acquiesced  in  a  system  of  dishonest  appoint- 
ments to  public  ofRce,  in  dishonest  work  of  public  officers, 
in  dishonest  removals  from  public  office,  could  not  remain 
honest  in  other  relations ;  the  poison  has  worked  into  the 
very  thoughts  and  into  the  very  life  of  our  people.  We  are 
a  dishonest  nation.  We  do  not  do  honest  work  anywhere. 
You  will  find,  if  you  look  around  you,  that,  even  in  private 
corporations,  influence  is  beUeved  to  be  more  potent 
than  good  work  to  ensure  promotion  and  advancement  of 
salary.  I  was  asked  only  last  week  to  write  in  behalf  of 
a  hard-working  employee  to  the  directors  of  the  corpora- 
tion in  which  he  had  been  employed  for  ten  or  fifteen 
years  to  ask  for  an  increase  of  salary,  and  I  was  told  that 
only  influence  could  secure  it. 

No,  we  cannot  expect  any  thorough  reform  in  this  coun- 
try until  the  present  generation  has  died  off,  and  another 
has  grown  up  under  an  honest  systen  of  public  work,  a 
generation  which  believes  in  honesty  because  it  sees  it, 
which  this  generation  never  has. 

Our  Street  Cleaning  Commissioner  is  giving  us  daily  a 
lesson  in  honest  work,  and  the  fact  that  the  men  who 
are  now  cleaning  our  streets  and  making  Eleventh  Avenue 
and  First  Avenue  and  the  tenement  house  streets,  which 
used  to  hold  festering  heaps  of  rotten  refuse  all  winter 


494  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

long,  cleaner  than  Fifth  Avenue  and  Broadway, — that 
these  street-sweepers  are  the  very  same  men,  most  of 
them,  who  used  to  stand  round  our  filthy  streets  leaning 
on  their  brooms,  shows  what  can  be  effected  by  a  change  of 
system. 

In  the  old  times  those  men  were  not  appointed  to  work 
at  street  cleaning,  but  at  dirty  politics,  and  they  knew  it, 
and  every  man  and  boy  in  the  city  knew  it,  and  the  fact 
that  they  received  their  wages  from  the  public  funds  for 
street  cleaning  affected  no  one.  Of  course  they  did  the 
work  they  were  appointed  to  do,  not  the  work  they  were 
paid  to  do.  But  now  they  know  they  are  retained  ta 
clea»  the  streets,  and  that  if  they  do  not  clean  the  streets 
they  will  go,  and  therefore  they  do  the  work  for  which  the 
public  pays  them;  and  again,  every  man  and  boy  in  the 
city  knows  this,  and,  as  I  say,  the  difference  in  the  moral 
effect  is  immense. 

And  now,  how  can  women  help  in  destroying  the  evils  of 
which  we  have  been  hearing,  and  how  can  we  help  to 
bring  in  an  honest,  fair  enforcement  of  our  national  and 
state  civil  service  laws,  and  thereby  regenerate  our 
people  ?  The  duty  which  lies  nearest  to  our  hands  just 
now  is  the  salvation  of  our  own  city.  And  there  are  two 
sides  to  the  duty.  One  is  to  save  the  city  from  the  bad 
government  that  threatens  it,  and  the  other  to  help  to 
secure  a  good  government  for  it. 

To  save  the  city  from  bad  government  is  simply  to 
keep  out  of  power  the  men,  whether  Tammany^s  men  or 
Piatt's  men,  who  want  the  offices  for  selfish  purposes. 
If  we  consider  how  Tanamany  Hall  gained  its  power^ 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL   SERVICE  REFORM        495 

and  why  it  wanted  its  power,  this  will  show  us  also  how 
that  power  can  be  entirelj^  destroyed. 

Tammany  Hall  is  a  corporation  which  wants  to  hold  the 
control  of  the  New  York  City  Government,  not  to  serve 
the  people  of  the  city,  not  to  give  the  city  clean  streets, 
pure  water,  efficient  protection  for  life  and  property, 
smooth  pavements,  beautiful  parks,  or  any  other  thing 
that  it  is  necessary  for  the  people  to  have,  but  because  the 
yearly  expenditure  of  the  city  for  these  and  other  purposes 
is  more  than  forty  million  dollars.  If  Tammany  Hall 
and  the  Republicans  who  have  exactly  the  same  desire  can 
be  prevented  from  getting  possession  of  this  forty  million 
dollars  a  year  to  spend  in  strengthening  themselves,  they 
will,  they  must,  cease  in  time  to  be  dangerous,  for  they 
have  no  other  way  of  keeping  a  following  except  the  actual 
possession  of  the  offices,  or  the  hope  that  they  will  soon 
regain  them.  They  are  not  Hke  a  political  party  which 
has  principles  and  objects,  to  attract  men  to  its  standard  ; 
to  succeed  is  their  only  object,  and  if  they  fail  often 
enough,  they  must  break  asunder  and  scatter. 

What,  then,  can  each  of  us  do  to  help  to  keep  them  out  ? 

First,  we  must  want  to  keep  them  out. 

Second,  we  must  have  faith  that  the  right  must 
triumph. 

Third,  we  must  speak  the  truth  about  them. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  besides  saving  the  city  from  a  bad 
government,  our  duty  is  to  try  to  secure  for  it  a  good 
government.  The  people  need  all  sorts  of  things,  ma- 
terial, moral  and  spiritual,  but  they  need  a  good  system 
of  government  as  the  first  condition  towards  obtaining 


496  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

these  things.  We  need  such  governments  as  many 
foreign  cities  have,  where  the  best  men  are  put  at  the 
head  of  each  department  and  kept  there.  We  want  no 
two  years'  terms  nor  four  years'  terms  to  upset  and  de- 
morahze  the  business  of  the  great  city  at  regular  intervals. 
We  want  common  sense,  common  honesty  and  high  civic 
patriotism  in  our  city  government,  and  we  want,  on  the 
part  of  the  people,  the  recognition  that  it  is  their  duty  to 
demand  these  qualities  from  those  they  put  in  power.  .  .  . 

Civil  Service  Reform  and  Public  Charity' 

I  believe  that  of  all  the  public  officers  elected  in  our 
State,  the  Superintendents  of  the  Poor  are  the  least  tram- 
melled by  political  pledges,  and  the  least  controlled  by 
political  considerations  in  their  actions.  The  people  of 
the  counties  cannot  help  recognizing  that  a  man  to  whom 
is  entrusted  the  welfare  of  hundreds  of  peculiarly  helpless 
fellow-creatures  should  have  at  least  a  certain  fitness  for 
his  position,  and  they  therefore  as  a  rule  choose  men  who, 
although  in  the  dominant  party,  are  not  party  slaves,  and 
sometimes  they  even  go  so  far  as  to  entirely  disregard 
party  in  the  choice  of  the  man  most  fit.  But  unhappily  it 
is  not  common  to  disregard  part}^  considerations,  even  in 
the  election  of  Superintendents  of  the  Poor. 

The  people  of   the   State  of  New  York  have  so  long 

been  accustomed  to  the  ownership  of  the  public  officers 

by  whichever  political  party  happens  to  be  in  power,  or 

even  to  their  ownership  by  a  particular  member  of  the 

*  Digest  of  paper  sent  June  29,  1897,  to  Convention  of  Superin- 
tendents of  the  Poor  of  New  York  State. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        497 

successful  party,  that  they  have  lost  all  sense  of  the  actual 
wrong  and  dishonesty  of  such  a  condition  of  things,  and 
also  of  the  absurdity. 

That  the  pubHc  officers,  appointed  to  the  public 
work,  and  paid  by  the  pubhc  money,  should  not  be  the 
servants  of  the  pubHc,  but  should  be  the  slaves  of  a 
small  number  of  persons,  and  sometimes  of  one  person, 
who  can  force  them  for  their  own  ends  to  neglect 
the  pubhc  work,  seems  natural  enough  in  Russia, 
where  the  people  are  themselves  almost  slaves,  but  it  is 
most  unnatural  in  the  State  of  New  York,  where  the  people 
think  that  they  are  free  and  that  they  govern  them- 
selves. 

Civil  Service  Reform  is  the  rescuing  of  the  public 
officers  from  this  unnatural  control,  placing  them  at  the 
service  of  the  people  at  large,  and  requiring  them  on  pain 
of  instant  dismissal  to  do  the  work  for  which  they  are 
paid.  .  .  . 

Our  State  charitable  institutions  have,  for  many  years 
at  least,  been  kept  out  of  politics.  We  have  never  de- 
scended as  a  state  to  the  depth  of  mean  dishonesty 
which  has  been  reached  in  too  many  of  the  other  states  of 
the  Union,  of  sacrificing  the  insane,  the  idiotic,  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  and  the  blind,  who  are  wards  of  the  State,  to  the 
demands  of  party  politicians.  .  .  .  Our  State  Board 
of  Charities,  also,  has  been  always  free  from  political 
influence,  and  here  again  we  have  been  far  more  fortu- 
nate than  many  of  our  sister  states.  But  we  all  know 
that  this  cannot  be  said  of  most  of  our  county  and  city 
charities,  nor  of  our  jails  and  prisons.  .  .  . 
2k 


498  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Civil  Service  Reformers  ask  that  political  opinions 
of  local  officers,  whether  elected  or  appointed,  shall  be 
ignored,  and  that  they  shall  be  chosen  only  because  they 
are  fitted  to  discharge  the  duties  of  the  places  they  seek. 
And  certainly  nothing  can  be  more  reasonable,  especially 
as  regards  Poor  Law  officers ;  for  what  can  politics  have  to 
do  with  the  proper  care  of  paupers,  whether  in  or  out  of 
institutions?  .  .  .  There  is  no  peculiarly  protectionist 
method  of  caring  for  dependent  children,  no  especially 
free-trade  way  of  giving  outdoor  relief,  no  gold  or  silver 
plan  for  treating  the  evils  of  vagrancy,  and  therefore  it  is 
wrong  to  admit  the  consideration  of  these  great  questions 
when  officers  are  to  be  elected  whose  special  and  only 
duty  it  is  to  attend  to  these  and  other  local  matters,  be- 
cause it  will  inevitably  lead  the  voters  to  disregard  the 
qualifications  which  are  needed  in  these  important  posi- 
tions. .  .  . 

There  should  be  two  objects,  and  only  two,  in  the 
mind  of  every  officer  connected  with  the  administration  of 
public  relief. 

First :  To  diminish  the  burden  laid  upon  the  public,  by 
such  wise  economy  as  will  result  in  preventing  any  increase 
in  the  number  of  persons  to  be  supported  by  the  commu- 
nity, either  in  or  out  of  institutions — that  is,  to  prevent 
pauperism. 

Second  :  To  deal  with  each  individual  man,  woman  and 
child  who  is  brought  under  his  care  so  that  their  physical, 
mental  and  moral  condition  shall  be  improved,  in  order  that 
if  possible  they  may  be  lifted  out  of  the  dependency  in 
which  they  are  —  that  is,  to  cure  pauperism. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        499 

These  two  objects  cannot  be  attained  except  by 
officers  who  possess  a  certain  degree  of  intelligence  and 
pubhc  spirit  to  begin  with,  and  who  are  ready  to  study 
the  history  of  the  administration  of  public  relief,  and  to 
learn  from  the  experience  of  others,  and  their  own  experi- 
ence ;  and  it  makes  no  difference  whether  they  are  Repub- 
licans, Democrats,  Populists,  or  Prohibitionists.  .  .  . 
-  The  only  questions  considered  should  be  as  to  the  charac- 
ter, inteUigence  and  knowledge  of  the  candidates,  and  in 
the  case  of  Superintendents  and  Overseers  of  the  Poor, 
they  should  be  asked  also  what  they  intend  to  do  with  the 
dependent  children,  the  tramps,  the  people  in  the  alms- 
houses and  the  applicants  for  outdoor  rehef . 

There  are  methods  of  dealing  with  all  these  people 
which  will  double  and  treble  and  quadruple  their  numbers, 
or  in  other  words,  which  will  entice  four  times  as  many 
persons  as  need  be  into  the  degradation  of  pauperism, 
and  keep  them  in  misery,  and  crush  the  hard-working  tax- 
payers by  the  burden  of  their  support ;  and  there  are  other 
methods  which  will  free  these  unhappy  victims  from  the 
bonds  of  dependence,  and  make  them  independent  and 
happy,  while  at  the  same  time  the  public  is  also  relieved 
of  their  support.  .  .  .  Any  community  which  allows 
part  of  its  people  to  be  tempted  into  the  ranks  of  pauperism 
and  the  rest  to  be  burdened  by  unnecessary  taxes  for  the 
support  of  pauperism  has  itself  to  blame,  because  it  does 
not  choose  to  apply  the  principles  of  Civil  Service  Reform 
to  the  administration  of  its  public  charities  and  leave  poli- 
tics out  of  consideration  in  matters  with  which  pohtics 
have  not  the  slightest  concern. 


600  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  Ethics  of  Civil  Service  Reform  ^ 

There  are  three  different  ways  in  which  the  ethics  or 
moral  aspect  of  Civil  Service  Reform  must  be  considered. 
First,  as  regards  the  community,  the  city,  the  state,  or 
the  nation,  as  the  case  may  be,  in  its  character  of 
employer  ;  second,  as  regards  the  community  as  composed 
of  possible  office  holders,  and  third,  as  regards  the  indi- 
vidual office  holder.  .  .  . 

The  reason  we  in  the  United  States  require  only  to  re- 
form our  civil  service  and  not  also  our  military  and  naval 
services,  as  was  necessary  in  England,  is  that  we  started  the 
two  latter  in  the  beginning  upon  the  plan  which  was  right ; 
and  in  fact  the  object  of  Civil  Service  Reform  is  to  apply 
in  the  civil  service  the  very  same  plan  which  has  worked 
so  admirably  in  the  Army  and  the  Navy. 

That  plan  is  simply  to  select  good  material  from  which 
to  make  officers  of  the  Army  and  Navy,  to  train  them 
especially  for  the  work  the  public  wishes  them  to  do,  to 
treat  them  honorably  while  they  are  in  the  service,  and  to 
expect  them  to  behave  honorably,  and  to  give  them  every 
motive  for  honorable  conduct,  and  to  see  that  they  do  not 
starve  when  too  old  for  further  public  work.  This  system 
has  given  us  the  men  who  have  brought  glory  to  the  name 
of  the  United  States  during  our  late  war  ;  and  if  we  had  the 
same  system  in  the  civil  service,  we  should  have  exactly 
the  same  kind  of  men  in  the  civil  offices,  and  we  should  be  as 
proud  of  them  as  we  now  are  of  our  Army  and  Navy  heroes. 

*  Summary  of  address  delivered  in  1898,  at  the  Broadway  Taber- 
nacle, and  believed  to  be  unpublished. 


WORK   FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        501 

Now  as  regards  the  ethical  aspect  of   the  question. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  it  would  be  good  policy  if  we  could 
get  such  men  into  all  the  ci\dl  offices  of  the  United  States, 
and  of  the  states,    counties  and  cities.     Is  it   equally 
clear  that  it  is  dishonest  and  wrong  not  to  have  them  ? 
It   seems   to   me   still   more   clear.     The   public  offices 
belong  actually  to  the  people  as  a  whole,  because  they 
pay  the  taxes  from  which  are  paid  the  salaries  of  these 
public   officers,  and  it  is  due   to   the  people  that  the 
work  of  these  officers  should  be  well  done,   and   that 
the   money  which    they  pay    should    not    be    wasted. 
When  the  work  is  badly  done   and  when  the  money 
of  the  people  is  wasted,  the  people  are  defrauded.  .  .  , 
But  it  is  an  acknowledged  fact,  known  to  us  all,   that, 
as  a  rule,  our  public  work  is  not  so  well  done  as  pri- 
vate work ;  that,  with  the  rarest  exceptions,  we  do  not 
succeed  in  filling  our  offices  with  our  best  men ;  and  that, 
unhappily,  we  often  do  get  very  inefficient  men  and  some- 
times very  dishonest  men  into  some  of  them.  ...  * 

Politics  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  choice  of  the  in- 
dividual to  fill  an  office.  When  a  man  is  wanted,  say  for 
clerk  in  a  public  office,  instead  of  finding  the  best  man 
who  can  be  persuaded  to  take  the  place,  it  is  given  to  some 
one  who  has  been  out  of  work  for  a  long  time,  some  one 
who  has  been  active  as  a  politician,  some  one  whom  no 
private  employer  would  take ;  and  thus  the  pubHc  work 
is  badly  done  and  the  public  money  is  wasted.  .  .  .  This 
man  relies  more  on  his  political  influence  to  keep  him  in 
office  than  on  his  efficiency  and  industry;  his  place  is 
insecure,  and  he  enjoys  it  while  he  has  it,  and  works  for 


502  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

his  boss,  on  whom  his  welfare  depends,  and  not  for  the 
people  who  pay  his  salary.  Finally,  if  his  boss  gets  into 
trouble,  he  is  thrown  out  of  employment  and  is  left  to 
starve  or  not,  as  happens.  The  system  is  a  very  cruel  one 
to  the  individual  office  holder,  besides  being  a  wasteful  one 
for  the  public. 

Civil  Service  Reform,  so  far  as  it  is  related  to  the  com- 
munity as  an  employer,  to  the  nation,  to  the  state,  to  the 
county  and  to  the  city,  consists  in  securing  for  the  public 
a  body  of  well  trained  and  efficient  men  and  women  to 
do  the  public  work ;  in  rewarding  them  for  their  honesty 
and  efiiciency  by  promoting  them  to  better  offices  with 
higher  salaries ;  in  making  them  secure  in  their  places  as 
long  as  they  do  their  work  well,  and  dismissing  them  when- 
ever they  do  it  badly  ;  and  in  providing  for  them  when  they 
have  spent  their  lives  in  the  pubHc  service.  That  is.  Civil 
Service  Reform  consists  in  getting  the  public  work  done 
as  honestly  and  as  efficiently  as  it  is  possible  to  do  it,  and 
in  givirig  the  people  a  good  return  for  the  money  they  pay  ; 
and  this  constitutes  its  ethical  aspect  so  far  as  the  public 
as  employer  is  concerned.  .  .  . 

As  to  the  ethical  aspect  of  Civil  Service  Reform  as 
regards  the  people  at  large  considered  as  possible  office 
holders,  it  involves  questions  of  equal  rights,  of  fair  play, 
or,  in  other  words,  of  democracy.  Offices  in  old  times,  in 
all  countries,  were  the  personal  property  of  the  king. 
They  are  so  now  in  countries  which  have  a  despotic  form 
of  government.  The  king  gave  away  the  offices  to  his 
favorites,  who  sold  them  to  strangers,  and  the  only  view 
of  office  was  that  it  was  a  privilege  given  to  those  who  had 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        503 

influence,  which  enabled  them  to  get  power  and  money  out 
of  the  people.  It  never  entered  anybody's  head  that 
a  public  officer  was  a  servant  of  the  people  and  required 
to  do  work  for  the  people.  . .  .  Now  this  old  despotic  view 
of  public  office,  as  the  property  of  the  person  in  power,  be 
he  czar,  emperor  or  king,  is,  curiously  enough,  the  view 
taken  by  a  very  large  section  of  the  people  of  this  republic, 
the  only  difference  being  that,  instead  of  thinking  that  the 
offices  belong  to  one  permanent  despot,  they  are  supposed 
to  belong  to  the  particular  party  which  is  in  power,  and 
often  to  the  particular  boss  of  that  party.  .  .  . 

Now  Civil  Service  Reform  means  exactly  the  opposite 
of  this  view,  and  where  it  is  honestly  enforced,  no  one  party 
or  person  has  any  control  whatever  over  the  great  bulk 
of  the  public  offices.  A  real  reform  of  the  civil  service 
means  that  every  man  and  woman  in  the  country  has  a 
right  to  serve  the  public  if  he  or  she  is  qualified  to  do  so, 
and  that  the  right  is  conceded  and  acted  upon.  Every  per- 
son who  chooses  to  apply  for  an  office  is  given  a  perfectly 
fair  chance  with  every  one  else  to  prove  that  he  has  the 
qualities  and  capacity  and  character  needed  in  that  office. 
He  does  not  have  to  go  to  a  particular  district  leader  or 
to  a  particular  boss  and  ask,  as  a  personal  favor,  to  be 
appointed  to  an  office,  but  he  goes  to  the  Civil  Service 
Commission,  makes  his  application,  is  notified  when  he 
can  be  examined,  takes  his  examination,  and  if  he  is  the  best 
qualified,  is  appointed  and  enters  on  his  term  of  probation, 
sure  that  if  he  does  his  work  well,  and  is  industrious  and 
honest,  he  will  in  six  months,  receive  his  appointment, 
and  that  nothing  but  dishonesty  or  incompetence   can 


504  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

prevent  his  remaining  in  the  piibhc  service  and  receiving 
promotion.  .  . .  Thus  as  concerns  the  community  as  a  body 
of  possible  office  holders,  the  moral  side  of  Civil  Service 
Reform  consists  in  substituting  a  democratic  system  for 
a  despotic  system,  a  fair  and  just  system  for  one  con- 
trolled by  personal  and  partisan  favoritism. 

As  regards  the  individual  office  holder,  the  ethical  aspects 
of  Civil  Service  Reform  are  almost  more  important,  if  that 
is  possible,  than  in  the  two  aspects  I  have  considered. 
Picture  to  yourselves  the  position  of  the  office  holder  under 
the  two  systems.  Let  us  imagine  a  young  man  seek- 
ing a  subordinate  position  in  the  civil  service  under 
the  spoils  system,  a  young  clerk,  with  a  wife  and  child 
to  support.  He  is  competent,  but  has  found  it  hard  to  get 
employment,  and  is  in  extremity.  A  friend  tells  him  that 
he  knows  the  boss  and  will  give  him  a  note  of  introduction. 
In  a  general  way  he  disapproves  of  the  boss  and  of  the  ways 
of  the  boss,  but  he  has  no  very  strong  principles,  and 
he  does  need  work.  So  he  takes  the  note  and  goes  to  the 
house  of  the  boss;  his  friend  has  a  pull  and  he  is  ad- 
mitted to  an  interview,  is  graciously  promised  a  place 
and  receives  a  note  to  the  head  of  a  department,  calls 
with  the  note  on  the  Commissioner,  has  a  talk,  is  promised 
an  appointment,  is  told  also  that  he  is  expected 
to  join  the  district  organization  of  the  party  to  which 
the  boss  and  Commissioner  belong  and  to  subscribe 
to  the  various  chowders  and  balls  that  are  given  by  the 
organization,  and  to  work  and  vote  with  the  boss  and 
Conomissioner.  He  accepts  the  place  with  the  conditions 
attached.    At  first  he  tries  to  do  his  work  honestly  for  the 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL   SERVICE   REFORM        505 

public ;  he  is  sneered  at  by  his  colleagues  in  office  as  a  fool 
who  wastes  his  pains.  .  .  .  Then  there  comes  to  his  knowl- 
edge something  actually  dishonest  done  by  his  superior  in 
otnce,  and  he  is  asked  to  do  his  share  in  furthering  it. 
He  is  shocked ;  he  would  like  to  be  honest,  but  he  is 
weak;  he  knows  of  no  other  employment  if  he  resigns; 
he  knows  that  he  has  no  one  to  appeal  to,  that  every  man 
in  the  public  service  above  and  below  him  depends,  as  he 
does,  for  a  Uvelihood,  on  the  boss,  that  the  boss  reaps 
part  of  the  product  of  this  dishonest}'- ;  he  becomes  a  thief, 
not  for  himself,  but  for  others.  Finally  his  friend  fails  to 
please  the  boss,  or  the  claims  of  some  one  else  must  be 
attended  to,  and  one  morning  he  receives  a  note  from  his 
superior  requesting  his  resignation,  and  he  is  turned  out, 
hopeless,  helpless,  dishonest,  degraded  in  his  own  sight, 
without  faith  in  himself,  in  his  country,  or  his  God.  This, 
you  and  I  know,  has  been  the  history  of  many  a  victim  of 
the  spoils  system  in  this  country  during  the  past  hun- 
dred years,  and  this  must  be  the  history  of  many  more  until 
the  real  reform  of  the  civil  service  has  been  adopted. 

[Describing  in  detail  the  competitive  examination  for 
the  appointment  by  which  the  candidate  is  certified  to 
the  appointing  power  and  enters  on  his  six  months'  pro- 
bation, Mrs.  Lowell  concluded  as  follows:] 

We  will  assume  that  this  successful  candidate  is  our 
capable  young  man  :  he  begins  his  duties  in  an  office  with 
other  young  men  who  have  passed  the  same  examinations ; 
each  clerk  knows  that  every  other  clerk  is  there,  as  he  is, 
because  of  proved  capacity  and  recognized  good  character ; 


506  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

each  clerk  respects  himself  and  respects  his  colleagues. 
Every  one  knows  that,  as  he  obtained  his  position  by 
his  o\\Ti  good  quahties,  so  he  will  be  retained  for  the 
same  qualities ;  all  depends  upon  himself ;  there  is  no 
favoritism,  no  pull,  no  boss  to  fear  or  fawn  upon.  So  these 
young  men  are  happy  in  their  work  and  proud  of  the 
service  of  the  city ;  they  know  they  are  doing  good  work, 
and  every  good  quality  is  fostered,  every  evil  quaUty 
repressed.  After  six  months'  probation,  our  young  man 
receives  his  permanent  appointment,  and  in  due  time  he, 
with  the  other  energetic  young  clerks,  competes  for  a  higher 
place,  gains  it  in  honest  competition ;  and  so,  as  the  years 
pass,  he  goes  from  place  to  place,  receiving  the  approval 
of  his  own  conscience  and  of  his  superior  officers,  respected, 
honorable,  happy,  a  noble  civil  servant  of  the  noble  city 
he  loves. 

Spain  an6  Civil  Service  Reform  ^ 

The  dying  of  a  nation  is  a  tragic  sight.  The  dying  of 
Spain,  the  discoverer  and  once  the  owner  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  western  hemisphere,  her  death  throes  upon  the 
very  spot  where  Columbus  landed  and  w^here  he  Ues  buried, 
is  a  tragedy  which  this  nation  could  not  watch  unmoved, 
even  were  it  not  the  instrument  used  to  give  the  death 
blow.  But  Spain  presents  not  merely  a  tragic  spectacle 
to  the  people  of  the  United  States,  it  furnishes  also  a  lesson 
and  a  warning. 

This  country  is  called  upon  to  end  the  long  agony ;  but 
Spain  has  been  wounded  unto  death  by  her  own  sons.  She 
1  Letter  to  Evening  Postt  May,  1898. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        507 

is  a  dying  nation  because  of  internal  corruption  and  dis- 
honesty, and  the  description  of  the  causes  of  her  ruin  has 
an  ominously  familiar  sound  to  iVmerican  ears.  We  have 
in  Spain  the  spectacle  of  a  nation  which  conducts  its  govern- 
ment upon  the  principles  which  control  Tammany  Hall 
and  the  Republican  and  Democratic  machines.  Not  only 
its  civil  service,  but  its  Army  and  its  Navy,  have  for  genera- 
tions been  treated  as  ^' Spoils,'^  and  the  result  is  before  us. 
We  know  well  what  incompetency,  what  weak  inefficiency, 
are  the  necessary  outcome  of  such  principles,  and  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  Spain  has  failed  in  every  direction. 

[In  support  of  her  contention  that  the  humiliation  of 
Spain  in  her  war  of  1898  against  this  country  was  inevitable 
because  of  her  four  hundred  years  of  government  by  the 
spoils  system,  Mrs.  Lowell  made  apt  use  of  quotations 
on  this  very  subject  from  addresses  delivered,  a  few  days 
before  her  letter  was  written,  by  Don  Carlos  in  Brussels, 
by  Charles  Bonaparte  at  a  Civil  Service  Reform  meet- 
ing in  New  York,  by  Carl  Schurz  at  the  same  meeting, 
and  by  James  Russell  Lowell,  her  husband's  uncle,  in 
letters  written  in  1879  from  Madrid  and  later  from  London. 
Said  Mr.  Bonaparte:  ''The  corruption  of  her  public 
service,  civil  and  military,  has  cost  Spain  a  world." 
Said  Mr.  Schurz :  ''The  battle  that  has  just  been  won  at 
Manila  was  a  battle  between  a  'Civil  Service  Reform'  navy 
and  a  'Spoils'  navy.  I  hope  that,  whatever  may  result 
from  this  war,  undesirable  as  it  is,  it  will  at  least  convey 
this  lesson  to  the  American  people."  Writing  from  Lon- 
don, Mr.  Lowell  said  :  "Spain  shows  us  to  what  a  civil 


508  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

service  precisely  like  our  own  will  bring  a  country  that 
ought  to  be  powerful  and  prosperous.  It  was  not  the 
Inquisition,  nor  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  and  Moriscos, 
but  simply  the  boss  system,  that  has  landed  Spain  where 
she  is.'^ 

After  quoting  also  from  an  article  by  John  Foreman, 
'^  Europe's  New  Invalid, '^  from  the  National  Review, 
September,  1897,  in  which  the  evil  effects  of  the  spoils 
system  in  Spain  and  her  colonies  were  pointed  out,  Mrs. 
Lowell  concluded  her  letter,  which  was  widely  reprinted 
and  commented  upon,  as  follows  :  ] 

As  I  have  said,  the  d^dng  of  Spain  is  a  tragedy,  but  to 
the  people  of  the  United  States  it  is  more  than  a  tragedy. 
The  lesson  is  writ  large  that  all  may  see.  The  destruc- 
tion of  two  fleets  because  of  incompetency  and  dishonesty, 
because  of  moral  rottenness  producing  physical  ruin, 
is  a  demonstration  which  none  can  fail  to  understand. 
But  we  have  also  the  corollary,  far  more  welcome  and 
more  glorious.  The  American  people  see  in  their  own 
Navy  the  result  of  a  careful  selection  of  men  for  a  special 
service,  the  result  of  the  long  and  arduous  training  of  these 
men  for  the  work  they  have  to  do,  and  the  result  of  the 
assurance  given  them  by  their  country  that  the  service  they 
enter  on  in  their  youth  and  to  which  they  devote  their 
manhood  is  an  honorable  service.  In  the  United  States 
Army  we  find  the  same  results  from  the  same  system. 
The  people  have  heard  but  little  of  either  Army  or  Navy 
for  a  generation ;  and  yet  now,  when  they  are  needed,  heroic 
men  stand  forth  ready  to  do  heroic  deeds,  and  the  Ameri- 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        509 

can  people  reap  the  glory.  There  is  no  question  that,  had 
the  American  people  so  willed  it,  they  could  have  had  just 
such  men  to  fill  their  civil  service  and  their  diplomatic 
service. 

The  question  now  is,  will  the  people  take  to  heart  the 
lesson  and  join  England  in  her  advance  to  civilization, 
humanity,  and  honor  or  will  they  follow  Spain?  Shall 
we  have  all  our  public  work,  naval,  miUtary,  civil,  and 
diplomatic,  done  by  our  Deweys,  our  Hobsons,  and  our 
Merritts,  or  by  the  henchmen  of  our  Hannas,  Quays,  and 
Hills? 

A  Hard  Lesson  in  Reform^ 

To  THE  Editor  of  the  Tribune. 

Sir: 
In  the  Tribune  of  October  10  were  printed  on  the  same 
page  three  statements  in  regard  to  physicians  in  public 
employment,  which,  read  in  connection  with  each  other, 
contain  a  lesson  of  vital  import  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States. 

The  first  quotation,  from  the  Journal  of  Kansas  City, 
states  that  the  Medical  Superintendent  of  the  State  Insane 
Asylum  at  Topeka  has  resigned,  and  accompanied  his 
resignation  by  a  letter  to  the  Governor  of  Kansas  giving 
the  reasons  for  his  action.  This  letter  tells  an  astound- 
ing story  of  alleged  cruelty,  inhumanity,  and  debauchery 
at  that  institution,  and  the  writer  placed  the  responsi- 
bility for  these  conditions  upon  the  Governor  when  he 

said:  ''You    will    probably  recall  that  President  J 

installed  his  father-in-law.  Dr.  W ,  a  doctor  without 

1  Abstract  of  letter  to  New  York  Tribune^  dated  October  15,  1898. 


510  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

a  diploma,  in  the  position  of  assistant  physician  and 
that  when  it  was  shown  that  he  was  not  a  fit  and  proper 
person  for  the  service,  he  was  not  discharged,  but  was 
transferred  to  the  Asylum  at  Osawatomie.  ...  It  is  a  well- 
known  fact  that  Dr.  W was  a  street  fakir,  a  dealer  in 

patent  medicines,  and  an  all-round  professional  quack. 
In  the  opinion  of  yourself  and  the  Board,  he  seems  to  pos- 
sess the  qualifications  necessary  to  entitle  him  to  care  for 
the  insane  of  Kansas. '^ 

[The  second  statement  Mrs.  Lowell  quotes  in  this  letter 
is  from  a  report  of  Colonel  L.  M.  Maus,  chief  surgeon  of 
the  Seventh  Corps  of  the  United  States  Army,  in  regard 
to  the  regimental  surgeons  under  his  command,  who 
wrote:  ^^A  number  of  them  had  not  been  required  to 
pass  examinations  at  all.  None  of  them  had  any  knowl- 
edge at  all  of  administrative  duties  such  as  were  required 
successfully  to  run  division  hospitals.  ...  I  feel  quite  sure 
that  the  medical  service  has  suffered  more  on  the  score 
of  inexperience  on  the  part  of  regimental  surgeons  than 
for  any  other  reason.  These  men  were  unable  to  appre- 
ciate the  great  value  of  sanitation.'^ 

The  third  statement  quoted  was  an  extract  from  the 
annual  report  of  the  Surgeon-General  of  the  Navy,  William 
K.  Van  Reypen,  showing  the  care  exercised  to  secure  good 
material  for  the  Medical  Corps.  '^In  the  last  fiscal  year 
829  applications  for  information  concerning  the  appoint- 
ments of  assistant  surgeons  in  the  Navy  were  received, 
and  248  permits  were  issued  to  doctors  to  appear  for  ex- 
amination. Of  the  above  number  65  candidates  appeared 
before  the  Examining  Boards,  of  whom  17  were  rejected 
physically,  19  rejected  professionally,  12  withdrawn  for 
further  examination,  and  17  were  found  physically  and 
professionally  qualified  for  admission  as  assistant  surgeons 
in  the  Medical  Corps  of  the  Navy." 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        511 

Mrs.  LowelFs  letter  continues :  ] 

It  seems  almost  unnecessary  to  point  the  moral.  We 
have  in  these  extracts  an  explanation  of  the  causes  of  the 
deep  disgrace  that  has  often  stained  our  public  service,  of 
the  sorrow  which  is  now  wringing  the  heart  of  the  nation, 
and  of  the  glory  which  has  turned  the  eyes  of  all  the 
civilized  world  upon  the  United  States  with  admiration. 

The  Navy  has  done  great  service  to  the  nation  since 
May  1,  but  the  greatest  of  all .  .  .  is  the  lesson  the  Navy 
has  given  the  nation  of  the  value  of  efficient,  conscientious 
training.  .  .  .  What  we  really  need  is  to  follow  throughout 
our  whole  system,  in  our  federal  civil  service,  in  our 
volunteer  army  and  in  our  state  and  city  governments, 
the  example  of  our  Navy,  to  select  our  public  officers  care- 
fully and  to  train  them  thoroughly. 

The  lesson  has  been  a  severe  one,  but  it  would  seem  as 
if  at  last  the  people  of  the  United  States  must  have 
learned  it.  For  thirty  years  a  small  handful  of  patriots 
have  been  warning  them  of  the  wickedness  and  folly  of 
the  spoils  system  —  for  thirty  years  the  prophets  of 
Civil  Service  Reform  have  shown  how  political  and  per- 
sonal influence  in  appointments  to  pubUc  office  eat  out,  ia 
time,  the  character  and  capacity  of  a  nation. 

But  the  people  did  not  heed.  Their  ears  were  dull  of 
hearing.  The  people  did  not  seem  to  care  when  it  was 
only  paupers  who  died  of  official  neglect,  when  it  was  only 
helpless  idiot  children  who  had  the  scurvy,  when  it  was  only 
physicians  to  take  charge  of  public  insane  asylums  who 
were  appointed  without  examination. 

But  now,  now  that  from  Maine  to  Alabama,  from 
Virginia  to  California,  there  is  not  a  state  where  hearts 
are  not  bleeding  for  the  lives  of  husbands,  sons,  and 
brothers  lost  and  blasted  by  official  ignorance  and  neglect ; 
now,  when  the  blighting  touch  of  political  and  personal 


512  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

influence  in  appointments  to  public  oflSce  has  fallen  upon 
the  flower  of  our  youth,  surely  now,  at  last,  the  people 
of  the  United  States  will  have  ears  to  hear. 

The  voters  of  the  State  of  New  York  are  especially 
fortunate  above  those  of  the  rest  of  the  country ;  at  this 
moment  they  have  the  opportunity  of  electing  as  Gov- 
ernor, Theodore  Roosevelt,  a  man  identified  with  the  re- 
form of  the  civil  service,  so  far  as  it  has  yet  been  adopted, 
and  conversant  with  the  Navy  methods  as  few  other  men  in 
the  country  can  be,  and  whose  character  and  past  history 
as  a  public  officer  are  a  guarantee  that  the  principles  upon 
which  these  methods  are  founded  will,  if  he  is  elected,  be 
the  principles  which  will  control  the  State  government. 

Civil  Service  Reform^ 

Your  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform  has  continued 
to  give  especial  attention  to  the  investigation  of  the  opera- 
tion of  the  reform  law  in  the  public  institutions  of  New 
York  State.  The  visits  we  have  made  have  been  not  only 
interesting  and  instructive  in  the  view  they  have  given 
of  actual  administrative  methods,  but  suggestive  of  im- 
portant lines  of  new  work  that  may  be  profitably  taken  up. 

We  find  striking  confirmation  of  the  correctness  of  the 
theory  of  the  merit  system.  There  is,  however,  in  some 
important  institutions  a  certain  impatience,  on  the  part 
of  the  superintendents  or  other  executive  officers,  of  what 
they  call  the  restrictions  placed  upon  them  by  the  re- 
quirements and  prohibitions  of  the  law,  or  its  subsidiary 
rules.     This  impatience,  and  the  accompanying  criticism, 

^  Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  presented  at  the 
Eleventh  Annual  Meeting  of  the  New  York  State  Federation  of 
Women's  Clubs  held  October  30  to  November  3,  1905,  at  Binghamton, 
N.  Y.  This  report  represents  the  last  public  work  of  the  chairman, 
Mrs.Charles  Russell  LowELL,whose  death  occurred  two  weeks  earlier. 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM         513 

spoken  or  tacit,  seemed  to  your  Committee  to  indicate 
a  misapprehension  of  the  nature  and  intent  of  the  law. 
But  this  attitude,  which,  if  not  openly  hostile,  is  quite 
surely  not  friendly,  is,  nevertheless,  a  matter  for  serious 
consideration  in  any  study  of  the  working  or  results  of  the 
law.     It  is  in  itself  a  factor  that  must  modify  results. 

Objection  to  the  law  on  the  part  of  administrative  officers 
is  traceable,  usually,  to  either  one  of  two  causes,  the  in- 
ability of  the  officer  to  use  his  subordinate  service  for  po- 
litical purposes  or  his  honest  belief  that  the  rules  establish 
too  many  technical  restraints  of  a  sort  that  hinder  his 
work  rather  than  help  it.  We  believe  that  the  institutional 
heads  referred  to  belong  to  the  latter  class.  It  is  not  un- 
natural that  some  among  these  should  hold  the  view  that 
their  own  judgment  of  the  fitness  of  candidates  for  sub- 
ordinate appointments  should  be  the  basis  of  selection 
rather  than  the  impersonal  judgment  of  Boards  of  Ex- 
aminers. Theoretically,  there  is  much  to  support  that 
view,  but  we  are  convinced  that  those  who  do  hold  it,  fail 
to  take  into  account  two  fundamentally  important  prac- 
tical facts :  first,  that  without  the  protection  of  the  com- 
petitive system  no  public  institution  can  be  safe  from  the 
baleful  intrusion  of  petty  partisan  poUtics,  —  a  far  greater 
embarrassment  to  the  freedom  of  action  of  appointing 
officers  than  any  code  of  rules  could  ever  be ;  and,  second, 
that  the  methods  of  selection  under  the  civil  service  rules 
are  not  yet  perfected,  that  the  examination  sj^stem  may 
be  greatly  improved  through  the  cooperation  of  the  very 
officers  who  so  often  complain  of  it,  and  that  the  tests  of 
examination  and  probation,  scientifically  developed,  have 
been  shown  by  abundant  experience  to  make  the  best  sifting 
process  as  yet  devised  for  any  large  body  of  employees. 

That  these  facts  are  not  unrecognized  was  strikingly 
shown  by  one  of  the  later  experiences  of  your  Committee, 

2l 


514  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

in  visiting  a  State  institution  having  the  care  of  a  large 
number  of  transgressors  and  degenerates.  There  we 
found  the  superintendent  frankly  grateful  for  the  pro- 
tection  the  law  afforded  him.  Nowhere  is  intelligent  and 
sympathetic  cooperation  on  the  part  of  all  officers  and 
employees  required  more  urgently  than  here.  The  work  of 
the  institution  is  difficult  and  complex,  for  it  aims  alike  at 
the  physical,  mental,  and  moral  improvement  of  its  wards. 
In  other  words,  no  State  institution  would  so  quickly  feel 
hampering  restrictions  upon  its  work,  if  such  existed. 
Yet  this  superintendent  declares  that  the  freedom  from 
importunity  and  dictation  in  the  matter  of  appointment, 
and  the  resultant  relief  from  any  sense  of  obligation  or 
responsibility  not  immediately  concerned  with  the  work  of 
the  institution,  are  an  immense  aid  to  the  success  the  in- 
stitution is  achieving.  If,  now  and  then,  the  privilege  of 
direct  appointment  of  a  particular  person  to  a  particular 
position  may  seem  desirable,  and  the  methods  prescribed 
by  the  law  cumbrous  in  comparison,  the  superintendent 
finds  that  the  advantage,  in  the  long  run,  far  outweighs 
the  benefit  in  the  occasional  instance,  and  that  the  process 
of  sifting,  under  the  probation  rule,  is  in  itself  invaluable. 
In  our  experience  as  visitors  no  institution  seemed  to  us 
so  effectively  administered  as  this.  The  general  idea 
upon  which  its  work  is  based  is  at  once  scientific  and 
sympathetic,  and  the  details  of  its  development  are  ad- 
mirably planned  and  carried  out. 

In  these  contrasted  cases,  representing  as  they  do  clear 
differences  of  opinion  on  the  point  which  it  is  especially 
our  interest  to  study,  the  intelligence  and  zeal  of  the  chief 
officials  may  be  said  to  be  equally  admirable.  In  the  case 
we  have  just  noted,  however,  the  superintendent  is  of  the 
younger  generation,  to  whom  the  civil  service  law  is  not 
a  new  thing,  to  be  regarded  distrustfully  because  it  sub- 


WORK  FOR  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM        515 

verts  much  of  the  old  order,  but  a  condition  met  at  the 
outset  of  a  career,  and  accepted  because  official  experience 
has  proved  it  an  aid  rather  than  a  hindrance.  In  these 
differences  in  age  and  in  the  character  of  previous  ex- 
perience, with  all  such  differences  connoted,  hes,  we  be- 
lieve, much  of  the  explanation  of  the  divergence  of  opinion. 
The  men  of  older  experience,  much  oftener  at  least  than 
those  who  have  come  more  recently  into  the  field,  are  in- 
stinctively disinclined  to  use  the  new  system  or  to  aid  in 
its  practical  development.  It  is  a  theory  at  least  which  we 
shall  be  interested  to  test  by  further  observations. 

Meanwhile  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  competitive 
system  has  its  imperfections.  On  the  contrary,  it  will  be 
more  helpful  to  the  Civil  Service  Reform  cause  if  they  be 
frankly  recognized  when  revealed,  either  by  administra- 
tive officers  or  others ;  and  if  a  sufficient  part  of  the  energy 
of  those  who  study  the  subject  be  devoted  to  their  correc- 
tion. The  examinations  should  be  as  well  fitted  to  the 
particular  case  as  may  be  practicable.  In  technical  posi- 
tions, previous  training  and  experience  should  be  given 
large  weight,  care  should  be  taken  that  the  best  available 
candidates  are  attracted,  and  the  competition  of  such 
candidates  should  be  encouraged  by  giving  to  the  public 
ser\dce  more  stability,  making  it  more  of  a  career  than  it 
is  today. 

Great  progress  has  been  made  in  improving  the  system 
along  all  of  these  lines,  but  no  doubt  much  still  remains 
to  be  done.  Under  proper  development  we  believe  it  will 
meet  the  demands  of  every  honest  appointing  officer,  and 
that,  in  fair  course  of  time  considerations  of  merit  in  public 
employment  will  prevail  as  generally  as  they  do  in  private 
employment  today.  Your  Committee  feels  that  a  wider 
knowledge  of  the  meaning  and  results  of  Civil  Service 
Reform  will  generally  accelerate  the  continued  growth  of 


516  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  movement.  The  committees  of  various  local  bodies 
in  the  National  Federation,  in  cooperation  especially  with 
the  Women's  Auxiliaries  of  the  Civil  Service  Reform 
Associations  of  New  York,  Massachusetts,  and  Maryland, 
have  done  a  great  deal  of  useful  work  in  this  direction. 
Many  thousands  of  pamphlets  have  been  placed  in  the 
hands  of  high-grade  school  children.  Prizes  have  been 
given  for  essays  submitted  in  competition,  and  speakers 
have  been  secured  for  public  meetings.  We  suggest  to  in- 
dividual members  of  clubs  that,  through  the  reading  room 
of  public  libraries  and  the  classes  in  history  and  civil 
government  of  the  Christian  Association,  the  interest  of 
many  other  young  people  might  be  enlisted.  We  have 
found  librarians  and  the  officers  of  such  associations  very 
friendly  to  suggestions  we  have  made.  We  believe  that 
actual  visits,  not  only  to  institutions  or  departments 
where  the  merit  rules  are  in  force,  but  to  the  offices  of  the 
Civil  Service  Commissions,  where  the  machinery  of  ex- 
amination may  be  seen,  will  prove  of  advantage  to  all 
students  of  the  system. 

No  great  political  reform  wrought  in  America  repre- 
sents the  triumph  of  public  opinion  as  does  this.  Its 
extension  must  depend  on  the  same  force,  and  there  are 
branches  of  high  importance,  in  both  State  and  nation,  to 
which  it  does  not  yet  apply.  We  should  help  by  every 
means  within  our  power,  and  particularly  through  educa- 
tion, to  create  a  public  opinion  so  much  stronger  that  the 
principle  will  be  established  in  every  place  in  which  it 
does  not  now  prevail. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

Memorials 

The  general  feeling  of  loss  occasioned  by  the  death  of 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  expressed  not  only  in  the  public  press, 
but  also  at  memorial  meetings.  Under  the  auspices  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  the  most  important  of  these  meetings  was  held  in 
the  assembly  hall  of  the  United  Charities  Building,  on 
the  evening  of  November  13,  1905. 

Before  the  appointed  hour,  the  hall  was  crowded  with 

representative  people,  and  many  others  could  not  obtain 

entrance.     Robert  W.  de  Forest,  President  of  the  Charity 

Organization  Society,  presided  and  deUvered  the  opening 

address,  while  among  the  speakers  who  followed  him  were 

Joseph  H.  Choate,  Felix  Adler,  Jacob  A.  Riis,and  SethLow. 

Their  addresses,  together  with  many  other  eulogies  of  Mrs. 

Lowell,  not  only  in  prose,  but  also  in  poetry,  are  included 

in  a  memorial  volume  published  in  1906  by  the  Charity 

Organization   Society.     Considerations   of   space   permit 

the  inclusion  only  of  some  extracts  from  this  volume,  and 

in  chronological  order  other  memorial  notices  which  it 

omits. 

Robert  W.  de  Forest 

We  have  met  tonight  in  memory  of  a  noble  woman  — 
a  woman  whom  we  all  honor  for  what  she  did  and  whom  we 

517 


518  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

all  love  for  what  she  was.  I  know  of  no  one  of  the  present 
generation  in  our  city  and  State  who  has  been  a  more 
potent  force  for  social  uplift  than  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell. 
I  know  of  no  one  who  has  been  so  beloved  and  whose 
memory  will  be  so  tenderly  cherished  by  all  kinds  and  con- 
ditions of  men.  Whatever  inequalities  there  be  among 
those  who  are  assembled  here  —  whether  of  station  or 
learning  or  opportunity  —  we  are  here  on  an  equal  plane 
of  friendship  for  her ;  man  to  man,  and  woman  to  woman. 

[Mr.  de  Forest  here  mentioned  Mrs.  Lowell's  work  for 
the  Charity  Organization  Society,  and  many  other  so- 
cieties or  movements  of  a  humanitarian  character,  more 
particularly  referred  to  elsewhere  in  this  volume,  and 
continued :  ] 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  every  inch  a  woman.  Unlike  most 
women  who  have  sought  to  be,  or  who  have  been,  actors  in 
public  affairs,  she  never  for  one  instant  yielded  a  particle 
of  her  woman's  charm  or  of  her  woman's  tenderness.  With 
the  strength  and  courage  of  a  man,  she  never  hesitated  to 
strike,  and  strike  hard,  when  duty  called  to  strike,  but 
her  woman's  gentle  touch  bound  up  the  wounds,  and  the 
blow  left  no  sting  behind. 

What  must  it  have  been  to  her  hero  husband  to  have 
had  the  love  of  such  a  woman,  even  for  a  few  short 
months !  .  .  . 

In  her  dealings  with  others,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  absolutely 
sincere.  She  spoke  out  all  she  thought.  She  held  back 
nothing  of  the  truth  as  she  saw  it.  No  consideration  of 
policy  ever  weighed  with  her.     She  would  have  thought 


MEMORIALS  519 

policy  inconsistent  with  truthfulness.  Herein  was  one 
of  the  greatest  charms  of  intercourse  with  her.  Herein, 
perhaps,  was  her  greatest  source  of  strength.  .  .  . 

Had  Mrs.  Lowell  hved  in  mediaeval  times,  she  would 
long  since  have  been  canonized  as  a  saint.  Had  she  hved 
at  a  still  earlier  period  in  our  Christian  era,  she  would  have 
been  among  the  martyrs.  But  Uving  as  she  did  in  our 
times,  she  suffered  more  than  forty  years  ago  the  cruelest 
martyrdom  that  could  ever  befall  a  wife  and  sister ;  and 
whether  because  of  that  martyrdom,  or  rather,  as  I  think, 
in  spite  of  it,  because  she  was  herself,  she  has  for  all  these 
succeeding  years  emanated  that  intense  s^nnpathy  for  all 
humankind,  and  particularly  for  all  humankind  that 
needs  and  suffers,  which  ancient  art,  for  want  of  better 
vehicle,  has  pictured  with  the  halo. 

Felix  Adler 

We  meet  together  tonight  as  those  who  have  suffered 
a  common  bereavement.  I  believe  that  if  it  had  been 
deemed  wise  to  select  the  Cooper  Institute  for  this  meeting, 
the  Cooper  Institute  would  have  been  filled  to  overflowing. 
The  first  citizens  of  the  State  and  the  laboring  people  would 
there  have  united  in  paying  homage  to  the  memory  of 
Mrs.  Lowell. 

It  seems  almost  incredible  that  she  has  gone  from  us. 
But  a  few  months  ago  she  took  counsel  with  us,  and  was 
actively  interested  in  all  reform  movements.  We  had  no 
warning  of  the  peril.  Of  a  sudden  she  has  disappeared 
from  our  mortal  view,  and  coming  together  here  tonight 
it  is  the  first  opportunity  that  many  of  us  have  to  exchange 


620  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

comments  and  to  jointly  express  our  feelings  about  what 
we  have  lost. 

I  can  only  say  that  the  City  of  New  York  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  less  noble  city  to  live  in,  now  that  I  can  no  longer 
associate  it  with  the  presence  of  this  noble  woman.  If  I 
may  be  permitted  to  say  so,  I  have  much  the  same  feehng 
about  her  that  I  had  about  Mr.  Baldwin.^  The  city  we 
live  in  is  not,  after  all,  a  city  of  houses  and  streets ;  but  the 
city  means  for  us  the  women  and  men  who  live  in  it,  the 
ideals  that  exist  in  it,  the  touch  of  nobility  we  experience 
in  it ;  and  when  such  a  person  as  Mrs.  Lowell  goes,  the 
city  is  so  far  depreciated  for  us.  And  yet  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  very  object  of  this  meeting  is  that  this  shall  not 
be  the  case;  and  that  while  she  is  withdrawn  from  our 
earthly  walks  and  sight,  we  shall  continue  to  sanctify 
the  city  by  a  permanent  memorial  of  her ;  and  above  all 
by  having  a  care  that  the  value  of  her  life  shall  not  be  lost 
for  us,  by  making  sure  that  the  memorial,  at  all  events, 
shall  be  erected  in  our  individual  spirits. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  meet  here  today  to  do  her  honor ; 
she  is  past  receiving  honor  at  our  hands ;  we  come  here  to 
do  something  for  ourselves,  not  for  her ;  to  see  to  it  that 
the  advantage  and  profit  of  that  life  shall  not  be  lost  for  us. 
I  think  we  can  do  that  best  and  in  the  simplest  way  by 
each  of  us  taking  thought,  and  quietly  and  with  a  holy 
feeling,  looking  up  to  her  as  if  she  were  present  with  us 
at  this  moment,  and  fixing  in  our  minds  the  lineaments  of 
her  spiritual  self. 

^  William  H.  Baldwin,  1863-1905 ;  railroad  president  and  philan- 
thropist. 


MEMORIALS  521 

Of  the  living  we  have  but  inadequate  portraits.  We 
see  them  at  different  times,  in  different  relations,  in  differ- 
ent aspects ;  but  perhaps  we  never  have  the  mental  quiet 
and  occasion  to  combine  these  portraits,  to  combine  them 
as  the  artist  would,  and  to  fashion  a  portrait  true  to  the 
character.  The  advantage  and  purpose  of  a  memorial 
meeting  is  that  we  should  add  this  portrait  to  our  mental 
picture  gallery.  Each  of  us  on  the  platform  will  en- 
deavor to  contribute  something  to  the  fashioning  of  that 
portrait ;  and  then  we  shall  take  it  with  us  and  keep  it  in 
holy  memory  and  consider  it  in  quiet  moments,  and  think 
of  her  as  she  was  to  us. ' 

I  have  always  had  a  reverential  feeling  toward  Mrs.  Low- 
ell. It  seemed  to  me  that  I  never  approached  her  without 
hearing  the  words :  "Take  off  the  shoes  from  thy  feet,  for 
the  ground  thou  approachest  is  holy  ground.^'  Whether 
it  was  the  unconscious  idealizing  influence  of  that  sorrow  of 
which  she  never  spoke,  or  whether  it  was  something  else,  her 
charm,  her  sweet  dignity,  her  simplicity,  the  sense  of  close 
human  relations  with  the  poorest  and  humblest  human 
beings,  and  at  the  same  time  a  sense  of  elevation  above  the 
strongest  and  most  capable  of  those  who  approached  her, 
—  whatever  may  have  been  the  secret  of  the  influence,  it 
was,  above  all,  the  personality  which  counted.  And  if  I  am 
to  express  in  a  few  words  what  in  particular  seemed  to  me 
the  peculiar  nature  of  her  life,  apart  from  this  indefinable 
and  unanalyzable  sense  of  a  lofty  personality,  so  near  as 
to  be  near  the  lowliest  and  so  high  and  strong  as  to  be 
above  the  strongest  and  most  competent,  I  should  say  it 
was  in  her  case  the  effect  of  the  harmony  of  opposites. 


522  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

She  was  an  idealist  of  the  purest  kind.  And  yet  she  was 
always  the  most  practical  of  realists.  The  partial  list  which 
Mr.  de  Forest  has  read  to  us  is  evidence  of  that  practical 
realism,  that  strong  common  sense  and  sagacity  which 
distinguished  her  in  every  movement  in  which  she  took 
part.  She  was  a  harmonizer  of  the  ideal  and  the  realistic. 
She  was  a  harmonizer  of  opposites.  She  was  an  intense 
enthusiast  for  certain  causes.  Above  all,  she  dwelt  with 
motherly  sympathy,  with  the  motherhood  that  embraces 
all  mankind;  she  dwelt  upon  the  sufferings  and  the 
miseries  of  the  world.  But  more  than  b}^  the  sufferings 
and  the  miseries  of  the  world  was  she  touched  by  the 
wrongs.  It  was  injustice  in  any  form  that  called  out  her 
keenest  feeling.  It  was  this  that  made  her  for  so  long  a 
time,  with  one  other,  the  only  support  of  the  movement 
in  this  countr3^  for  justice  to  the  Filipino  people.  And 
yet,  despite  her  capacity  for  righteous  indignation,  she 
was  never  one-sided.  I  could  not  say  at  this  moment, 
truthfully,  that  she  was  on  the  side  of  the  Filipinos,  that 
she  took  the  side  of  the  Filipinos ;  nor  could  I  say  truth- 
fully that  she  took  the  side  of  the  laboring  people,  for  the 
reason  that  she  also  felt  so  genuinely  and  intensely  how 
cruel  the  oppressor  is  to  himself.  If  ever  any  one  loved 
the  wrongdoer,  it  was  Mrs.  Lowell  when  she  protested 
against  his  wrongdoing. 

Longfellow  has  shown  us  in  one  of  his  poems  how 
Florence  Nightingale  visited  the  beds  of  the  sick  at  Scutari, 
and  how  they  loved  her  for  coming  to  them,  and  how  they 
thought  of  her  as  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp.  I  think  of  Mrs. 
Lowell  also  as  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp.     Mr.  de  Forest  said 


MEMORIALS  623 

that  many  envied  the  poor  for  the  ray  she  cast  into  their 
life ;  may  I  add  that  no  one  had  need  to  be  poor  to  have 
the  blessed  touch  of  that  ray. 

Among  many  others,  I  am  here  tonight  to  express  grati- 
tude for  the  ray  she  cast  into  my  life,  the  ray  of  a  true, 
spiritual  presence,  of  fine  American  womanhood,  and  of 
noble  humanity.  She  was  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp  for  many 
of  us.  She  carried  aloft  the  lamp  of  hope  and  of  pity 
and  of  a  beautiful  faith  in  us  all,  in  all  humanity. 

Father  Huntington  ^ 

.  .  .  Memory  goes  back  at  once  to  what  Mrs.  Lowell 
was  to  a  large  body  of  young  women  in  this  city  in  the 
feather  workers'  strike ;  and  when  I  speak  that  word, 
I  speak  a  word  that  rings  of  contention,  of  opposing  in- 
terests, and  perhaps  of  violent  antagonism ;  a  word  that  is 
likely  to  be  felt  as  a  hostile  word  by  some  people  who  are 
here.  And  yet  I  must  say,  quite  frankly,  that  I  never  have 
been  able  to  understand  how  the  moral  side  of  a  strike  — 
perhaps  its  moral  greatness  —  can  be  so  ignored  by  gen- 
erous men  and  women. 

Consider  what  it  means.  However  mistaken  men  and 
women  may  be,  however  foolish  their  effort,  is  there  not 
something  magnificent  in  seeing  those  who  have  work 
and  are  supporting  their  families  giving  up  their  chance 
of  earning  a  living,  surrendering  their  positions,  and 
beggaring  themselves,  in  the  hope  of  securing  for  those 
who  are  less  fortunate,  those  who  have  no  employment  — 

1  Rev.  James  O.  S.  Huntington,  Protestant  Episcopal  Order  of  the 
Holy  Cross. 


524  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

or  those  who  are  poorly  paid  —  more  poorly  paid  than 
themselves  —  of  securing  for  them  fairer  treatment  and 
juster  pay  ? 

.  .  .  Mrs.  Lowell  did  see  this,  and  she  acted  accordingly. 
She  was  as  quick  as  any  one  to  see  the  futility  of  many 
of  the  efforts  of  working  people  and  the  ignorance  that 
exists  among  them;  but  she  saw  deeper  than  that,  and 
felt  intense  sympathy  with  that  which  was  noble  and  true 
in  the  hard  struggle. 

So  she  came  forward  in  this  strike  of  the  feather  workers 
as  naturally  and  simpl}^  as  she  took  her  part  with  the  work- 
ing people  in  the  events  that  I  remember  distinctly  so 
many  years  ago.  She  did  not  offer  patronage ;  that  word 
is  inconsistent  with  our  memory  of  her.  She  did  not  come 
playing  the  part  of  Lady  Bountiful,  that  half-pathetic, 
half-romantic  figure.  She  came  in  her  own  natural  way. 
She  did  not  attempt  to  lay  aside  the  advantages  of  the 
position  that  belonged  to  her ;  she  did  not  try  to  transport 
herself  into  their  conditions ;  there  was  nothing  unreal  or 
unnatural  in  her  or  her  work.  She  came  to  the  work  with 
her  clear  intellect  and  her  generous  heart;  and  how  she 
did  put  strength  into  those  who  were  working  under  almost 
desperate  odds ;  how  she  lifted  up  the  cause ;  how  she  saw 
the  amusing  and  the  humorous  side  of  affairs;  how  she 
would  point  it  out,  while  feeling  at  the  same  time  the 
pathos  and  the  tragedy ;  and  how  with  the  buoyancy  of 
her  life  she  carried  all  along  with  her.  .  .  . 


MEMORIALS  625 


Joseph  H.  Choate 


If  you  should  ask  me  to  sum  up  in  one  word  the  life  and 
character  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  I  should  call  it  ^'Consecration." 
Other  women,  who  have  done  and  suffered  much  less  than 
she  did,  have  been  canonized;  but  she  was  consecrated 
to  a  glorious  and  tender  memory,  consecrated  to  duty,  con- 
secrated to  charity  in  its  largest  and  noblest  sense  —  the 
effort  to  do  all  in  her  power  for  the  relief  and  help  of  her 
fellow  men  and  women.  .  .  . 

I  think  it  is  very  largely  to  her  father  and  her  husband 
that  we  should  look  for  a  certain  inspiration  that  guided 
her  subsequent  steps.  You  know  that  very  often  our  own 
dead  exercise  a  much  more  potent  and  effective  influence 
upon  our  lives  and  conduct  than  any  living  associates. 
Time  cannot  loosen  their  hold  upon  our  hearts  and  minds. 
In  one  sense  they  never  have  come  back ;  they  never  do 
come  back ;  but  in  another  and  a  very  actual  sense,  they 
are  always  coming  back  to  us ;  especially  in  hours  of  stress 
and  peril  they  are  always  with  us,  and  we  gain  more  sup- 
port from  them  sometimes  than  from  any  living  compan- 
ions. We  often  hear  their  voices  with  absolute  distinct- 
ness. You  put  your  ear  to  the  telephone,  and  you  hear 
the  voice  of  a  loved  friend  in  Boston,  or  Chicago,  or  St. 
Louis,  with  perfect  distinctness,  the  quality,  the  tone,  and 
the  expression.  You  can  tell  by  the  sound  in  addition  to 
the  words  they  speak  whether  they  are  joyful  or  sorrow- 
ful, whether  they  are  well  or  ill.  And  so  through  the  long- 
distance telephone  of  time  we  hear  the  voices  of  our  de- 
parted with  equal  distinctness.  They  startle  us  with 
their  familiar  reality. 


526  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

In  dreams,  if  they  are  dreams,  we  see  their  actual  forms, 
just  as  they  moved  before  us  in  Ufe,  and  in  moments  of 
peril  and  sorrow  and  danger,  we  are  conscious  sometimes 
of  their  attendant  footsteps,  and  really  feel  the  support 
of  their  loving  arms. 

When  you  come  to  know  more  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  early 
days,  you  learn  the  wonderful  advantages  which  crowned 
her  life,  and  how  trial  and  suffering  made  her  what  she  was. 
[Mr.  Choate  then  made  interesting  and  touching  references 
to  Mr.  Shaw  and  Colonel  Lowell,  and  continued :]  With 
such  an  inheritance  from  the  father,  and  an  alliance  with 
such  a  man,  can  anybody  doubt  that  the  inspiration  she  so 
derived  from  them  set  her  in  motion  at  least  on  the  great 
and  splendid  career  of  which  you  have  all  heard  so  much 
tonight,  and  that  it  sustained  her  heart  and  courage 
through  it  all  ?  .  .  . 

I  hope  this  memorial  meeting,  expressive  of  our  admira- 
tion of  this  most  valuable  woman,  will  not  end  in  empty 
breath.  It  seems  to  me,  as  Professor  Adler  has  intimated, 
that  there  should  be  some  permanent  memorial  for  this 
woman  who  has  done  so  much  for  us.  .  .  . 

Jacob  A.  Riis 

Perhaps  one  excellent  way  of  making  future  generations 
remember  Mrs.  Lowell  would  be  to  call  one  of  the  small 
parks  now  coming  into  existence  all  over  the  city  after 
her.  There  is  a  distinct  need  of  attaching  the  influence  of 
such  a  name  to  one  of  the  parks  on  the  East  Side. 

I  have  been  trying  to  think  back  to  the  time  when  I 
first  knew  Mrs.  Lowell,  but  I  cannot  remember.     I  came  in 


MEMORIALS  527 

course  of  time  to  pay  almost  daily  visits  to  her  house.  In 
those  days  she  lived  in  East  Thirtieth  Street,  quite  near  to 
the  ferry  which  brought  me  over  to  New  York  when  I 
came  in  from  Long  Island,  and  I  fell  into  the  habit,  espe- 
cially when  anything  troubled  me,  of  ringing  her  doorbell 
when  I  passed  the  house.  She  was  never  ''out,''  always 
ready  to  sit  down  and  listen  and  give  advice  and  opinion. 
It  was  then  I  learned  what  a  patient,  sweet,  wise  and 
lovable  woman  she  was. 

Mr.  Stewart  spoke  of  her  courage.  Yes,  she  was  coura- 
geous. I  think  the  only  thing  in  the  world  she  was  afraid 
of  —  we  were  not  —  was  of  not  following  her  own  con- 
viction and  conscience  to  the  end. 

You  have  spoken  about  her  cheerfulness.  She  was  cheer- 
ful and  hopeful  because  she  believed  in  God,  and  could 
wait.  That  was  often  the  friendly  contention  between  us. 
She  could  wait.  I  was  young  then  and  impetuous,  impa- 
tient. She  believed  in  her  fellow-man  and  could  wait, 
because  she  saw  the  image  of  God  in  him,  and  was  sure 
that,  given  the  chance,  it  would  work  out.  She  was 
patient  because  life  and  her  faith  had  taught  her  wisdom ; 
and  she  had  that  God-given  sense  of  humor  that  gets  us 
over  so  many  rough  spots.  I  recall  an  occasion  when  we 
had  gone  to  Mayor  Grant  to  see  him  about  the  police 
station  houses.  We  had  nagged  and  nagged  the  Mayor 
until  he  was  tired  of  it,  and  when  we  told  him  for  the 
fiftieth  time,  I  suppose,  that  in  Boston  they  had  municipal 
lodging  houses,  he  cried  out  in  impatience:  '' Boston, 
Boston !  I  am  sick  of  the  name  of  Boston."  I  suppose 
he  did  not  know  what  ''Boston"  meant  to  her;   I  turned 


528  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL  , 

to  her  in  some  apprehension  to  see  how  she  took  it,  but 
she  was  leaning  back  in  her  chair  and  laughing  heartily. 

Speaking  of  her  patience,  I  remember  another  occasion 
when  we  had  gone  to  Albany  to  argue  for  something 
that  we  had  up  before  an  assembly  committee.  I  was 
speaking.  I  was  filled  up  with  arguments  which  she  had 
given  me  on  the  way  up,  and  not  those  which  I  had  thought 
out  for  myself,  and  was  trying  to  keep  my  mind  on  them, 
when  one  of  the  assemblymen  interrupted  me:  ^^Pro- 
fessor," he  said,  ^'you  people  come  here  year  after  year 
arguing  for  these  things ;  let  me  ask  you,  what  do  you  get 
for  it?"  For  the  moment  I  was  nonplussed.  ''What 
do  you  mean  ?  "    I  asked. 

"I  mean,"  he  said,  ''this,"  holding  out  one  hand,  "what 
do  you  get,  do  you  understand  ?"  I  could  have  throttled 
the  man.  He  was  the  only  one  I  ever  knew  to  distrust  or 
question  Mrs.  LowelFs  motives.  But  when  I  glanced  at 
her,  I  saw  her  sitting  with  that  patient,  far-away  look  in 
her  face.  Those  things  meant  nothing  to  her.  She  was 
there  in  a  cause.  It  was  God's  cause,  and  it  was  bound  to 
prevail.     The  rest  didn't  matter.  .  .  . 

[Referring  to  Mrs.  Lowell's  early  work  with  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  President  of  the  United  States  at  the  time  of  her 
death,  Mr.  Riis  said :  ]  .  .  .  Long  before  she  died,  she 
knew  what  Theodore  Roosevelt  stood  for  in  the  nation's 
life.  I  think  I  was  the  last  of  you  all  to  see  her.  She  sent 
for  me  to  come  out  to  Greenwich  where  she  was,  a  very  few 
weeks  before  she  died,  and  I  came  quickly.  .  .  .  She 
spoke  of  Roosevelt,  and  she  sent  the  last  message  of 
love  and  cheer.    When  I  gave  it  to  him  he  said :  "She  had 


MEMORIALS  529 

a  sweet,  unworldly  character ;  and  never  man  or  woman 
ever  strove  for  loftier  ideals."  .  .  . 

Seth  Low 

I  remember  to  have  heard  Colonel  Higginson,  of  Boston, 
speak  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  husband  as  one  of  a  group  of  young 
men  whom  he  had  known  at  Harvard,  ''who  threw  away 
their  lives  like  a  flower"  for  our  country.  I  have  seldom 
heard  a  phrase  that  moved  me  more.  It  seems  to  present 
the  picture  of  a  gallant  group  of  young  men,  full  of  the 
hope  and  the  enthusiasm  and  the  fancy  of  youth,  each 
asking  no  greater  privilege  than  to  lay  them  all  at  the  feet 
of  his  country,  as  a  lover  gives  a  bud  to  the  lady  of  his  love. 

It  was  not  given  to  Mrs.  Lowell  to  throw  away  her  life 
like  a  flower ;  but  for  forty-one  long  years,  to  use  her  own 
words,  her  character  grew  in  this  community;  she  had 
always  an  inspiring  and  uplifting  influence,  and  shed  abroad 
a  delightful  fragrance  as  she  moved  along  our  streets. 

...  I  like  Mr.  Choate's  suggestion  for  a  permanent 
memorial  of  her ;  and  I  hope  that  this  meeting  will  ask  that 
a  committee  be  appointed  by  the  chairman  to  arrange  for  a 
suitable  memorial  to  Mrs.  Lowell  at  the  hands  of  the  people 
of  this  great  city. 

I  suppose  Mrs.  Lowell  may  have  felt  that  her  name  stood 
for  something  among  the  poor  people  of  this  city.  I  do 
not  know  whether  she  could  realize  how  much  it  meant, 
not  to  them  only,  but  to  all  of  her  fellow-citizens.  Profes- 
sor Adler  spoke  of  her  as  a  Lady  with  a  Lamp.  She  was, 
indeed,  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp ;  and  she  went  before  us 
always  carrying  that  shining  light.     She  does  not  need 

2m 


530  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

any  memorial  at  our  hands ;  but  for  our  own  sakes  we  want 
to  prove  and  establish  before  the  world  that  we  not  only 
saw  in  her  the  light  of  her  character,  but  that  from  the 
flame  of  her  spirit  we  also  have  lit  a  light  in  our  own 
breasts. 

William  R.  Stewart^ 

[Mr.  Stewart,  complying  with  a  request  which  had  been 
made  him,  spoke  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  work  as  a  Commissioner 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  in  which  he  was  associated 
with  her  from  1882  to  1889.  The  memorial  volume  pub- 
lished by  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of 
New  York  in  1906  gave  place  to  the  address  in  full. 
Mr.  Stewart  concluded  as  follows :  ] 

Among  Mrs.  LowelFs  characteristics  which  impressed 
me  most  strongly  were  her  promptness,  constant  cheerful- 
ness, dauntless  courage,  and  tireless  industry  in  her  work. 
She  was  always  sincere  and  direct,  and  no  one  could  doubt 
for  a  moment  the  position  she  took  on  any  subject.  These 
qualities  and  her  total  absence  of  self-consciousness  account 
in  large  measure  for  the  wonderful  success  of  her  work. 

The  world  will  miss  Mrs.  Lowell,  for  good  men  and  good 
women  are  needed  on  every  hand  to  carry  on  its  work. 
This  State  will  miss  her ;  this  city  will  miss  her ;  but  we 
who  knew  her  best  will  miss  her  most  of  all. 

The  memorial  volume  also  contained  the  following 
articles  : 

'^Mrs.  Loweirs  Services  to  the  State,"  by  Edward  T. 
Devine ; 


MEMORIALS  631 

"Mrs.  Lowell  and  the  Unemployed,"  by  John  Bancroft 
Devins,  D.D. ; 

"Mrs.  Lowell  and  the  Consumers'  League,"  by  Maud 
Nathan  ; 

"Mrs.  Lowell  and  the  New  York  Charity  Organization 
Society." 

This  last  included  the  following  editorial  paragraphs 
from  Charities  for  October  14,  1905,  after  the  announce- 
ment of  Mrs.  LowelFs  death  : 

We  of  Charities  and  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society  have  indeed  the  right  to  share  in  an  ex- 
pression of  personal  bereavement.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  the 
founder  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  and  for  the 
twenty-three  years  since,  as  a  Commissioner  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  she  called  the  Society  into  existence, 
she  has  been  its  most  faithful,  untiring,  and  efficient 
member.  She,  more  than  any  other  person  —  although  it 
has  never  been,  and  she  and  her  associates  were  always 
determined  that  it  should  never  be,  a  one-man  society  — 
has  been  its  guiding  spirit. 

She  has  served  continuously  on  its  Central  Coimcil  and 
its  Executive  Committee,  and  has  also  worked  always  on 
the  more  humble  routine  of  its  district  work.  Only  a  few 
days  before  her  death  she  had  written  to  the  president 
expressing-  regret  that  she  could  not  attend  committee 
meetings  during  the  winter  and  a  desire  to  be  allowed  to 
remain  in  the  Central  Council.  We  moiu-n  the  loss  of  one 
whose  place  cannot  be  filled,  whose  services  will  never  be 
forgotten,  whose  work  will  remain. 


532  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  Independent  for  October  20,  1905,  published  the 
following : 

In  the  death  of  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell  last  week  the 
United  States  loses  one  of  its  noblest  and  greatest  women. 
For  forty  years  there  has  been  nobody  in  New  York  whose 
charitable  and  social  reform  effort  has  resulted  in  greater 
and  more  lasting  achievement  than  hers.  Her  monument 
is  built  in  the  Charity  Organization  Society  which  she 
founded  twenty-three  years  ago,  in  the  constitution 
and  statutes  of  New  York,  in  the  successful  fight  for  Civil 
Service  Reform,  in  her  impress  on  the  labor  movement,  on 
the  college  settlements,  and  in  fact  on  every  good  endeavor 
for  civic  reform.  Her  beloved  young  husband,  Charles 
Russell  Lowell,  was  killed  in  the  Civil  War  at  Cedar  Creek  ; 
her  patriot  brother,  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  perished  at  Fort 
Wagner,  at  the  head  of  his  Negro  regiment,  and  was  buried 
with  them.  No  wonder,  with  the  example  of  two  such 
sacrifices  to  treasure  in  her  memory,  Mrs.  Lowell  became 
what  she  was.     Her  work  will  remain. 

The  Outlook  for  October  21,  1905,  contained  the  follow- 
ing editorial :  ^ 

The  City  of  New  York  is  poorer  by  reason  of  the  death 
of  Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell  at  her  home  in  this  city 
on  Thursday  of  last  week,  for  it  has  rarely  numbered  among 
its  citizens  a  finer  character  or  been  the  witness  of  a  more 
high-minded  and  fruitful  life.  Connected  by  blood  and 
marriage  with  some  of  the  finest  men  of  her  time,  —  the 

'  Not  included  in  the  memorial  volume. 


MEMORIALS  533 

Lowells,  George  William  Curtis,  Francis  C.  Barlow, 
—  the  daughter  of  a  man  of  unusual  qualities  of  mind 
and  character,  and  the  sister  of  Colonel  Robert  G. 
Shaw,  Mrs.  Lowell  embodied  in  herself  the  best  traditions 
and  the  highest  aims  of  American  life.  After  the  terrible 
tragedy  which  the  Civil  War  brought  upon  her  in  the 
death  of  her  husband,  her  brother,  and  her  brother-in-law, 
all  graduates  of  Harvard  College  and  young  men  of  singular 
mental  and  moral  distinction,  Mrs.  Lowell  consecrated  her- 
self, in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word,  to  philanthropic  work. 
Free  entirely  from  the  passion  of  publicity  which  has  in- 
fected many  women  as  well  as  many  men  of  the  time,  she 
put  her  hand  at  the  start  to  some  of  the  most  perplexing 
problems  in  the  administration  of  the  charities  of  the 
State.  For  thirteen  years  she  served  as  Charities  Commis- 
sioner. Twenty-three  years  ago  she  founded  the  Charity 
Organization  Society,  one  of  the  most  useful  organizations 
in  the  whole  range  of  charitable  philanthropic  work  in  this 
city ;  and  almost  up  to  the  time  of  her  death  she  was  an 
active  worker  in  its  behalf.  Her  interest  in  the  Prison 
Association  bore  fruit  in  the  separation  of  the  sexes  in 
prisons.  She  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Woman's 
Municipal  League,  and  no  movement  looking  to  the  higher 
life  of  the  city  failed  to  secure  her  interest  and  sympathy, 
and  in  many  cases  her  active  support. 

Her  calm  courage,  self-forgetfulness,  practical  sagacity, 
and  high-mindedness  gave  her  great  influence  with  the 
men  and  women  with  whom  she  was  brought  into  contact, 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  woman  of  her  time  has  received 
higher  regard  in  this  city,  nor  has  any  been  more  useful, 


534  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

than  this  quiet,  unassuming  woman,  to  whom  the  largest 
social  opportunities  were  open,  but  who  gave  herself, 
with  rare  self-forgetfulness,  to  causes  often  inconspicuous, 
but  all  of  the  highest  importance.  She  devoted  herself 
to  pubHc  affairs  without  sacrificing  her  womanhness. 

A  Woman  of  Sorrows 
Josephine  Shaw  Lowell 

It  was  but  yesterday  she  walked  these  streets, 
Making  them  holier.     How  many  years 
With  all  her  widowed  love  immeasurably 
She  ministered  unto  the  abused  and  stricken 
And  all  the  oppressed  and  suffering  of  mankind,  — 
Herself  forgetting,  but  never  those  in  need  ; 
Her  whole  sweet  soul  lost  in  her  loving  work, 
Pondering  the  endless  problem  of  the  poor. 

In  ceaseless  labor,  swift,  unhurriedly, 
She  sped  upon  her  tireless  ministries. 
Climbing  the  stairs  of  poverty  and  wrong. 
Endeavoring  the  help  that  shall  not  hurt ; 
Seeking  to  build  in  every  human  heart 
A  temple  of  justice  —  that  no  brother \s  burden 
Should  heavier  prove  through  human  selfishness. 

In  memory  I  see  that  brooding  face 
That  now  seemed  dreaming  of  the  heroic  past 
When  those  most  dear  to  her  laid  loyal  lives 
On  the  high  altar  of  freedom ;  and  again 
That  thinking,  inward-lighted  countenance 


MEMORIALS  535 

Drooped,  saddened  by  the  pain  of  humankind, 
Though  resolute  to  help  where  help  might  be. 
And  with  undying  faith  illuminate. 

She  was  our  woman  of  sorrows,  whose  pure  heart 
Was  pierced  by  many  woes.    And  yet  long  since 
Her  soul  of  sympathy  entered  the  peace 
And  calm  eternal  of  the  eternal  mind. 
Inheritor  of  noble  lives,  she  held 
Even  to  the  end,  a  spirit  of  cheerfulness 
And  knowledge  keen  of  the  deep  joy  of  being 
By  pain  all  unsubdued.     Sister  and  saint. 
Who  to  lifers  darkened  passage-ways  brought  light ; 
Who  taught  the  dignity  of  human  service ; 
Who  made  the  city  noble  by  her  life ; 
And  sanctified  the  very  stones  her  feet 
Pressed  in  their  sacred  journeys. 

Most  high  God ! 
This  city  of  mammon,  this  wide,  seething  pit 
Of  avarice  and  lust,  hath  known  thy  saints. 
And  yet  shall  know.     For  faith  than  sin  is  mightier, 
And  by  this  faith  we  live,  —  that  in  thy  time, 
In  thine  own  time,  the  good  shall  crush  the  ill ; 
The  brute  within  the  human  shall  die  down ; 
And  love  and  justice  reign,  where  hate  prevents  — 
That  love  which  in  pure  hearts  reveals  thine  own 
And  lights  the  world  to  righteousness  and  truth. 

Richard  Watson  Gilder. 
December  3,  1905. 
From  Charities  and  The  Commons y  January  6,  1906. 


536  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

A  City's  Saint 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell 

"A  woman  lived  and  now  a  woman  dies ;" 
If  that  were  all,  this  line  were  much  too  long ; 

But  with  her  went  from  out  our  social  skies 
A  light,  and  voice  like  a  remembered  song. 

Some  saints  have  lived  who  on  the  ensanguined  field 
Walked  with  the  balm  of  healing  in  their  hands ; 

And  not  until  the  eye  of  God  is  sealed 

Fadeth  the  glory  where  some  woman  stands. 

Shedding  strange  radiance  from  her  tender  eyes ; 

Now  in  the  town,  and  now  in  court  or  camp  — 
Some  woman  with  her  deed  of  sacrifice. 

Lighting  the  world  like  an  eternal  lamp. 

And  she  to  whom  War's  tragedy  of  pain 

Had  brought  its  tears — whose  husband,  brother,  friend 
Passed  in  the  cannonading  to  the  slain  — 

Walked  with  her  lonely  sorrow  to  the  end. 

But  in  that  sorrow's  self-forgetfulness 

She  wrought  whose  splendid  task  is  done  too  soon ; 
Because  she  lived,  the  evil  days  are  less 

Bridging  these  civic  nights  to  highest  noon. 

And  amid  the  populous  town,  its  walls  that  rise, 
Its  massive  structures  wrought  of  myriad  hands, 

This  story  of  a  woman's  sacrifice 

Shines  like  a  beacon  where  the  city  stands. 


MEMORIALS  537 

This  shall  outlive  its  mortar  and  its  stone, 

This  shall  be  told  where  cities  rise  and  fall ; 
A  woman  working  in  its  way  alone 

With  loving  hands  built  bastions  round  its  wall. 

Joseph  Dana  Miller. 
From  The  Outlook^  January,  1906. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell  and  the  Peace  Movement  ^ 

A  stanza  in  the  beautiful  poem  in  memory  of  Mrs. 
Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  by  Joseph  Dana  Miller,  re- 
printed in  a  recent  number  of  Charities  and  The  Commons, 
prompts  me  to  a  word  of  tribute  to  Mrs.  Lowell  in  con- 
nection with  a  most  important  aspect  of  her  service,  which 
in  the  numerous  and  impressive  testimonies  to  her  great 
and  varied  ministry  which  you  have  published,  has  not, 
I  think,  found  recognition.  It  was  the  side  of  her  zeal 
and  consecration  which  I  personally  came  into  closest 
touch  with ;  it  was  a  remarkable  work ;  and  the  mere  fact 
that  it  should  not  have  been  emphasized  at  all,  if  even 
mentioned,  by  the  multitudes  of  fellow-workers  expressing 
their  gratitude  for  her  wonderful  life,  is  a  striking  witness 
to  the  opulence  and  comprehensiveness  of  that  lifers 
service. 

*'  And  she  to  whom  War's  tragedy  of  pain 

Had  brought  its  tears  —  whose  husband,  brother, 
friend 
Passed  in  the  cannonading  to  the  slain — 
Walked  with  her  lonely  sorrow  to  the  end." 

1  From  Charities  and  The  Commons,  February  17,  1906. 


638  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mr.  Conway  has  well  said,  in  those  last  solemn  pages 
of  his  autobiography,  that  the  commanding  cause  of  our 
time  is  the  war  against  war,  as  the  commanding  cause  half 
a  century  ago  was  the  war  against  slavery  —  the  war  in 
which  Charles  Russell  Lowell  laid  down  his  life.  I  have 
known  no  woman  in  America  who  personally  felt  this  more 
profoundly  than  Mrs.  Lowell.  The  present  war  system 
of  nations  was  to  her  a  monstrous  and  horrible  thing  —  the 
grossest  and  most  devastating  manifestation  of  what  is 
most  unjust,  wasteful,  wicked,  irrational,  un-Christian, 
and  inhuman  among  men. 

No  service  or  sacrifice  against  it  was  for  her  too  great. 
When  it  was  fixed  that  the  International  Peace  Congress 
in  1904  should  be  held  in  Boston,  she  at  once  became  a 
member  of  the  American  committee ;  and  that  committee 
made  her  a  member  of  its  executive  committee.  In  this 
executive  committee  of  twelve  were  two  New  York  mem- 
bers besides  herself,  both  men  of  great  ability  and  devotion 
to  the  peace  cause ;  yet  both  of  these  would  be  most  f or- 
w^ard  to  endorse  any  declaration  that  Mrs.  Lowell  did  more 
than  all  others  in  New  York  together,  save  only  Andrew 
Carnegie  by  his  generous  financial  assistance,  to  make 
the  Boston  Congress  and  the  great  meetings  which  fol- 
lowed in  New  York  the  impressive  demonstrations  which 
they  were.  I  would  go  farther  —  and  as  chairman  of  that 
executive  committee  my  gratitude  to  all  its  members  is, 
like  that  of  its  secretarj'-.  Dr.  Trueblood,  heartfelt  and 
strong  —  and  say  that  the  actual  personal  cooperation 
given  us  by  Mrs.  Lowell  was  greater  than  that  of  all  the 
other  members  of  the  conunittee  together.    It  was  a 


MEMORIALS  539 

service  so  conspicuous  and  rare  that  its  record  should  not 
fail. 

The  personal  work  which  Mrs.  Lowell  did  in  New  York 
in  the  way  of  solicitation  for  contributions  to  the  congress 
fund  was  extraordinary.  I  find,  looking  at  the  record,  that 
something  over  a  hundred  checks  came  to  us  from  New 
York.  More  than  three-quarters  of  these  came  through 
Mrs.  Lowell's  effort  —  seven  contributions  among  them, 
I  find,  of  $100  each,  as  many  more  of  $50,  and  many  more 
almost  equal.  This  was  the  result  of  personal  conference 
or  personal  correspondence  —  a  correspondence  continued 
throughout  the  long  summer,  much  of  it  mortgaging  her 
time  at  Ashfield  in  the  vacation  so  greatly  needed  and 
so  richly  earned. 

To  the  Boston  Congress  itself,  which  would  have  been 
such  an  inspiration  to  her,  she  did  not  come,  because  every 
moment  of  the  week  was  given  by  her  to  planning  and 
providing  for  the  great  Cooper  Union  meeting  and  the 
other  meetings  in  New  York  the  following  week,  for  which 
the  great  body  of  foreign  delegates  went  from  Boston. 
Oscar  S.  Straus  was  the  force  behind  the  reception  by  the 
Board  of  Trade  at  the  Hotel  Astor ;  Miss  Grace  Dodge  was 
the  force  behind  the  meeting  at  the  Teachers  College; 
and  others  contributed  nobly  to  the  splendid  result. 
But  Mrs.  Lowell  was  in  and  behind  everything,  giving 
direction  and  unity  to  all.  She  kept  the  wires  very  hot 
between  New  York  and  Boston  that  week;  and  one 
morning,  I  remember,  an  energetic  school  teacher  appeared 
at  my  office  straight  from  Mrs.  Lowell's  desk  to  make 
absolutely  sure  that  the  Bishop  of  Hereford  did  not  fail 


540  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

to  be  present  at  the  principal  New  York  meeting.  I  think 
she  stayed  in  Boston  almost  until  the  Bishop  was  actually 
on  the  train ;  and  I  felt  each  time  she  came  to  me  that  Mrs. 
Lowell's  eyes,  so  keen  for  every  detail,  were  looking  at  me 
through  hers. 

There  are  none  of  us  charged  with  the  peace  work  here 
in  Boston  who  will  not  always  feel  her  eyes  upon  us,  en- 
couraging, pleading,  and  commanding.  I  trust  that  the 
same  thought  of  her  untiring  service,  her  consecration,  and 
her  presence  may  be  a  perpetual  inspiration  to  the  new 
peace  society  just  being  organized  in  New  York.  Its 
organization  would  have  been  to  her  a  joy — that  greatest 
of  joys  to  her,  a  new  opportunity  and  instrument  for  ser- 
vice. Those  in  New  York  who  loved  her  can  show  their 
gratitude  in  no  way  which  would  have  given  her  greater 
satisfaction  than  by  supporting  as  she  would  have  done 
this  hopeful  movement  in  their  city  for  the  warfare  against 

Edwin  B.  Mead. 

Boston,  Mass. 

Josephine  Shaw  Lowell 

In  Memoriam 

As  now  and  then  a  star  breaks  through  the  gloom 
With  glow  so  strong,  so  tender,  and  serene, 
Dispelling,  one  by  one,  the  brooding  clouds  — 
Till  midnight  shades  melt  in  the  glow  of  morn  — 
So,  now  and  then  a  soul  serene  and  strong 
Shines  downward  through  the  clouds  of  human  pain, 
And  through  the  dark  of  human  need  and  wrong, 


MEMORIALS  541 

Till,  ^neath  its  patient  toil  and  radiant  calm  — 
Evil  shrinks  back  abashed,  and  good  is  crowned. 

A  star  like  this  is  for  no  land  or  clime  ; 

Each  cloud  ahke  its  radiance  must  share, 

And  when  its  hght  is  lost,  the  whole  earth  mourns. 

A  soul  hke  hers  to  the  wide  world  belongs. 

Its  light,  though  sometimes  hid  awhile  or  quenched. 

Flames  ever  at  the  heart  of  human  woes ; 

And,  kept  alive  by  those  who  knew  and  loved. 

Becomes  consuming  fire  to  every  wrong 

That  holds  humanity  in  suffering's  thrall. 

Shine  on,  O  Star  !  in  lifers  oft-clouded  heaven  ! 
Burn  on,  O  Soul  of  flame  !  in  life's  sore  needs. 
Pierce  e'en  om-  sadness  !     Let  thy  light  be  given 
To  those  who  glad  would  follow  where  it  leads. 
Who  fain  would  change  their  love  and  grief  to  deeds. 

Mary  Lowe  Dickinson. 
From  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  April  14,  1906. 

The  Service-tree 

To*  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell 

There's  an  old  Icelandic  rune, 
Chanted  to  a  mournful  tune, 
Of  the  service-tree,  that  grows 
O'er  the  sepulchres  of  those 
Who  for  others'  sins  have  died,  — 
Others'  hatred,  greed,  or  pride,  — 


542  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Living  monuments  that  stand, 
Planted  of  no  human  hand. 

So  from  her  fresh-flowered  grave  — 
Hers  who  all  her  being  gave 
Other  lives  to  beautify, 
Other  ways  to  purify,  — 
There  shall  spring  a  spirit-tree, 
In  her  loving  memory, 
Till  its  top  shall  reach  the  skies, 
Telling  of  her  sacrifice. 

John  Finley. 

From  the  Century  Magazinej  Maj^,  1906. 

The  memorial  volume  also  contains  resolutions  of 
regret  at  Mrs.  Lowell's  death,  adopted  by  the  Sixth 
New  York  State  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction, 
November  16,  1905.  Resolutions  were  also  adopted  by 
the  Woman's  Auxiliary  of  the  New  York  Civil  Service 
Reform  Association,  November  7,  1905;  by  the  New 
York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  and  by  the 
Woman's  Municipal  League  of  New  York. 

The  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities  at  its  meeting 
January  10,  1906,  unanimously  adopted  a  minute  express- 
ing regret  at  the  death  of  their  former  colleague,  Mrs. 
Lowell.  The  State  Charities  Aid  Association  took  appro- 
priate action  at  the  annual  meeting,  December  6,  1906. 
The  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the  Massachusetts  Civil  Ser- 
vice Reform  Association  adopted  resolutions  of  regret,  and 


MEMORIALS  543 

the  Federation  Bulletin  of  January,  1906,  published  an 
obituary  and  "memorial  notices. 

The  Woman's  Municipal  League,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Consumers'  League  and  the  Woman's  Auxiliary  of 
the  New  York  Civil  Service  Reform  Association,  organiza- 
tions, as  we  have  seen,  founded  and  led  by  Mrs.  Lowell, 
held  a  meeting  in  her  memory  at  New  York,  on  April  12, 
1906,  under  the  chairmanship  of  Miss  Margaret  L. 
Chanler,  President  of  the  Woman's  Municipal  League. 

The  Monthly  Bulletin  of  that  League  for  May  following 
took  the  form  of  a  memorial  number  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  and 
the  following  extracts  are  made  from  tributes  then  paid 
to  her : 

Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuyler 

It  gives  me  much  pleasure,  as  an  old  friend  of  Mrs. 
Lowell,  a  friend  from  girlhood,  although  several  years 
her  senior,  to  join  with  you  in  this  tribute  of  affectionate 
respect  to  her  memory.  .  .  . 

Had  she  not  chosen  to  give  her  life  to  the  service  of 
others,  to  the  poor  and  friendless,  she  would  doubtless 
have  made  her  mark  in  literature,  for  that  life  of  aspiration, 
earnestness,  and  industry  was  destined  to  leave  its  impress 
on  the  world  in  some  form.  One  thing  she  could  never 
have  been,  and  this  too  was  open  to  her,  a  society 
woman,  caring  for  fashionable  society  alone.  Not  that 
her  social  position,  always  recognized  as  of  the  best, 
did  not  help  her  in  her  work,  for  it  did ;  but  she  looked  upon 
it  and  upon  her  other  possessions,  as  of  the  things  to  be 
used  for  others,  if  she  ever  thought  of  them  at  all.  .  .  » 


544  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Those  who  knew  Mrs.  Lowell  well  knew  that  the  ex- 
periences of  those  years  of  the  war  were  the  abiding  in- 
fluences in  her  life,  not  of  despair  or  bitterness,  but  of 
sweetness  and  strength.  One  could  not  be  with  her — I 
never  could  —  without  feeling,  through  her  silence,  the 
ever-present  background  of  the  war;  without  a  sense  of 
reverence  for  that  supreme  sacrifice  for  country,  so  nobly 
accepted;   without  seeing  the  halo  upon  her  brow.  .  .  . 

Miss  Kate  Bond 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  in  earnest  in  whatever  cause  she  under- 
took, and  because  she  was  in  earnest,  men  and  women 
believed  in  her  and  listened  to  her  plans  and  followed  her 
leadership.  She  considered  carefully  the  methods  she 
adopted ;  she  never  wearied  in  her  aims,  and  the  citizens 
of  this  city  took  time  to  consider  the  practical  suggestions 
made  by  this  wise  and  self-sacrificing  woman  for  the  public 
good.  .  .  .  Behold  the  membership  and  influence  of  the 
Woman's  Municipal  League  as  it  is  today  !  It  was  Mrs. 
Lowell,  our  strong  adherent  to  the  right,  who  conceived 
the  idea  of  uniting  women  to  consider  the  city's  needs ! 
She  never  faltered  in  her  interest  or  in  her  determination 
to  promote  an  honest  city  government,  in  so  far  as  her 
individual  power  and  influence  could  effect  it.  Day  and 
night,  with  but  few  to  hold  up  her  hands,  in  the  early  days 
of  this  League,  Mrs.  Lowell  toiled  to  create  interest  among 
women  and  men  in  our  city  affairs.  I  have  seen  her  when 
the  early  autumn  came,  previous  to  the  city  elections, 
while  most  of  her  associates  were  still  out  of  town,  day 
after  day,  preparing  documents  for  distribution  and  writing 


MEMORIALS  545 

notes  to  absent  acquaintances,  soliciting  the  use  of  draw- 
ing-rooms in  which  meetings  might  be  held  to  discuss  the 
city^s  political  issues.  Great  as  was  the  cause  to  be  main- 
tained, she  held  no  detail  as  too  small  to  receive  her 
attention.  .  .  . 

Miss  Grace  H.  Dodge 

Miss  Dodge  spoke  extemporaneously  of  Mrs.  Lowell 
and  her  relationship  to  the  peace  movement,  and  especially 
emphasized  her  beautiful  service  in  the  fall  of  1904,  when 
the  great  National  Peace  Conference  was  held  in  Boston 
and  extra  meetings  in  New  York  City.  She  also 
further  described  the  spirit  of  peace  and  love  and  gentle- 
ness which  always  pervaded  Mrs.  Lowell's  personality 
and  her  home  surroundings,  and  said  how  much  this 
peaceful  atmosphere  had  done  to  rest  and  help  the  many 
tired  workers  and  friends  who  came  in  to  consult  her. 

Mrs.  William  H.  Schieffeun  ^ 

In  the  death  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  the  Woman's  Auxiliary 
of  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Association  has  lost  its  most 
loyal  and  distinguished  member.  ...  In  studying  the 
story  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  life,  from  the  time  when  her  young 
husband  and  her  brother  were  killed  in  the  Civil  War  — 
when  she  consecrated  her  life  to  the  cause  of  humanity  — 
we  are  thrilled  at  the  revelation  of  the  purity  and  nobility 
of  her  character.  Mrs.  Lowell's  absolute  abnegation  of 
self,  her  unique  unworldliness,  her  tender  sympathy  for 

1  Minute  presented  by  Mrs.  ScliiefiFelin  and  adopted  by  the  Woman's 
Auxiliary  of  the  New  York  Civil  Service  Reform  Association. 

2n 


646  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  neglected  and  suffering,  her  passionate  desire  to  help 
those  longing  and  struggling  for  Uberty  and  independence, 
her  burning  indignation  against  all  that  was  unworthy 
and  untrue,  her  patriotism  and  civic  pride,  her  cheerful- 
ness, helpfulness,  and  especially  her  humility,  show  a 
nature  of  surpassing  purity  and  strength,  a  pattern  not 
to  women  alone,  but  to  all  Americans.  We  who  have 
been  associated  with  Mrs.  Lowell  know  that  her  place 
cannot  be  filled,  for  we  have  lost  the  inspiration  of  our 
leader  and  our  dear  friend. 

Tributes  paid  in  words,  however  eloquent,  do  not  alone 
record  the  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell  and  her  work.  It  was 
the  privilege  of  a  loving  daughter  to  commemorate  the 
sacrificial  lives  of  both  her  parents  in  providing  the  first 
of  these  other  memorials.  Charles  Russell  Lowell  ac- 
quired in  1859  a  tract  of  land  containing  two  hundred  and 
one  acres,  situated  about  four  miles  from  the  city  of  Dixon, 
Illinois.  The  purchase  is  supposed  to  have  been  made 
partly  for  investment  and  partly  because  of  the  beauty  of 
the  property.  On  his  death,  in  1864,  Mrs.  Lowell  inherited 
this  land  from  her  husband,  and  for  more  than  forty  years, 
refusing  either  to  sell  or  to  lease,  she  held  it  in  his  memory, 
carefully  preserving  the  natural  beauties  he  had  loved  so 
well.  Miss  Lowell  in  turn  inherited  it  from  her  mother, 
soon  after  whose  death  in  1905,  she  carried  out  her  wishes 
by  conveying  it  to  the  city  of  Dixon  for  a  public  park. 
There  could  be  no  more  appropriate  memorial.  For 
many  years  a  dweller  in  the  most  crowded  city  in  the 
world,  Mrs.  Lowell  had  always  deplored  the  lack  of  breath- 


MEMORIALS  547 

ing  spaces  for  the  people  and  of  playgrounds  for  children, 
and  she  herself  had  led,  or  actively  supported,  several 
movements  in  New  York  intended  to  supply  present  needs, 
and  also  to  make  ample  provision  of  new  parks  in  the  sub- 
urbs for  the  future  growth  of  the  metropolis.  With  the 
deed  of  the  property,  Miss  Lowell  presented  a  valuable 
report  which  she  had  obtained  from  Olmsted  Brothers, 
eminent  landscape  architects  of  Boston,  in  which  they 
described  the  land  included  in  the  gift,  and  made  recom- 
mendations for  its  development  and  for  the  manner  of  its 
future  use.  The  Legislature  of  IlUnois  promptly  passed 
a  law  enabling  the  acceptance  of  the  land  for  park  purposes 
by  the  city,  which  on  May  8,  1907,  appointed  a  board  of 
five  commissioners  for  the  control  and  improvement  of 
'^Lowell  Park.'^ 

A  second  memorial  to  Mrs.  Lowell  is  a  fountain  at  Rad- 
eliffe  College,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  erected  by  Ma- 
jor Henry  L.  Higginson  and  Mrs.  Higginson  of  Boston, 
The  fountain,  an  old  Venetian  basin  of  red  granite,  was 
dedicated  June,  1906,  on  which  occasion  a  eulogy  of  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  delivered  to  the  students  by  Major  Higginson. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society, 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  often  associated  with  Mr.  Robert  W. 
Hebberd,  one  of  the  executive  officers,  who,  after  nearly 
ten  years'  subsequent  service  as  Secretary  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  in  1906  became  Commissioner  of 
Public  Charities  of  the  City  of  New  York,  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  Mayor  McClellan.  Mr.  Hebberd  had  the 
gratification  of  honoring  the  memory  of  his  fellow-worker, 
by  giving  her  name  to  a  new  hospital  steamboat  of  his 


548  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

department.  Built  at  West  New  Brighton,  Staten 
Island,  within  sight  of  Mrs.  LowelFs  old  home.  The  Lowell 
was  launched,  May  25,  1908,  with  appropriate  ceremonies, 
witnessed  by  many  of  her  friends,  and  went  into  com- 
mission September  1,  of  that  year.  Assigned,  primarily, 
to  the  duty  of  carrying  patients  from  the  East  Twenty- 
sixth  Street  pier  of  the  Department  to  the  hospitals  and 
other  institutions  on  the  islands  in  the  East  River,  this 
steamboat,  which  has  capacity  for  two  hundred  passengers, 
and  is  provided  with  several  private  cabins  for  the  very  ill, 
carries  on  her  daily  trips  a  physician,  a  matron,  and  a  nurse, 
to  minister  to  those  in  need  of  special  care.  A  bronze  me- 
morial tablet  suitably  inscribed  has  been  placed  by  Mr. 
Hebberd  in  the  saloon.  Long  may  The  Lowell  ply 
the  waters  of  the  metropolis  on  her  errands  of  mercy, 
and  so  continually  recall  the  devoted  labors  of  the  noble 
woman  whose  name  she  bears,  for  the  reUef  of  the  sick 
and  unfortunate  of  the  great  city. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  several  of  the  speakers  at 
the  Memorial  Meeting  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  held  in  the  United 
Charities  Building,  suggested  that  some  suitable  civic 
monument  should  perpetuate  her  name  and  her  services 
to  the  City  of  New  York.  Shortly  afterward  a  com- 
mittee, under  the  chairmanship  of  Seth  Low,  was  organized 
to  carry  out  this  recommendation.  After  carefully  con- 
sidering a  number  of  plans,  the  committee  decided  that 
the  memorial  should  take  the  form  of  a  fountain,^  to  be 
erected  in  Bryant  Park,  near  the  New  York  City  Public 
Library.  The  fountain  of  Stony  Creek  granite  consists 
^  Designed  by  Charles  A.  Piatt,  Architect. 


MEMORIALS  549 

of  a  large  bowl  of  classic  design,  from  which  the  water 
flows  into  a  basin  of  twenty-seven  feet  in  diameter.  The 
subscribers  to  the  fund  for  the  erection  of  the  fountain 
niunbered  nearly  three  hundred. 

At  the  New  York  State  Training  School  for  Girls, 
formerly  the  House  of  Refuge  for  Women,  at  Hudson,  an 
institution  which  in  consideration  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
founder's  interest  might  appropriately  in  future  bear  her 
name,  and  also  at  the  State  Reformatory  for  Women  at 
Bedford  there  are  Lowell  Cottages.  These  State  institu- 
tions, the  Asylum  at  Newark,  and  the  record  of  her  life 
work  are  her  most  enduring  memorials. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  MRS.  LOWELL'S 
WRITINGS 

1861-1862  A  young  girl's  wartime  diary,  July  23,  1861-November 

9,  1862. 

1877,  Feb.  28.    Lowell,  J.  S.,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  and  Henry  Hoguet. 

Report  relating  to  the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian 
Society  of  the  City  of  New  York.  Eleventh  Annual 
Report,  S.  B.  C.,i  1878,  pp.  99-102. 

Sept.  4.  Report  on  Assembly  Bill  No.  79,  1877,  to  S.  B.  C. 
Mrs.  Lowell  for  majority,  Samuel  F.  Miller  for 
minority  in  re  :  Reformatory  treatment  of  vagrants, 
Pamphlet.    4  p. 

Sept.  7.  Extracts  from  a  report  on  pauperism  presented  by 
Dr.  C.  S.  Hoyt,  Secretary  of  S.  B.  C,  in  regard  to 
vagrant,  feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates  of  the 
almshouses  of  the  State. 

Oct.  20.  Roosevelt,  Theodore,  J.  S.  Lowell,  Edward  C.  Don- 
nelly. Communication  to  the  Mayor  of  New  York  in 
regard  to  the  Oflficial  Charities  of  the  City.  Eleventh 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1878,  pp.  207-225. 

Dec.  24.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  Edward  C.  Donnelly.  Communica- 
tion to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment 
of  the  City  of  New  York.     Ibid.,  pp.  229-230. 

1878,  Jan.  14.     Roosevelt,  Theodore,   J.  S.  Lowell.    Communication 

to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  of  the 

City  of  New  York.    Ibid.,  pp.  231-234. 
Mch.  5.    Report  of  a  majority  of  the  Committee  on  Vagrancy, 

Mrs.  Lowell,  Chairman.    Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1878- 

1885,  pp.  16-17. 
Mch.  14.  Report  of  Committee  appointed  to  confer  with  the 

Trustees  of  the  Idiot  Asylum.    Minutes,  S.  B.  C, 

1878-1885,  p.  15. 
Nov.  12.   Report  of  the  Committee  to  which  was  referred  the 

*  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities. 
551 


652  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Senate  Bill  No.  322,  1878,  proposing  the  hiring  of 
buildings  as  workhouses  for  women.  Minutes, 
S.  B.  C,  1878-1885,  pp.  63-66. 

1879,  Jan.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  Edward  C.  Donnelly.    Report  relating 

to  the  public  charities  of  New  York  City.  Twelfth 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  237-256.  Also  in 
pamphlet  form. 
May  28.  One  means  of  preventing  pauperism,  in  re:  The  social 
harm  caused  by  vagrant  and  degraded  women. 
Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  Annual  Conference  of 
Charities  and  Correction,  Chicago,  June,  1879, 
pp.  189-200.  Pamphlet  form,  14  p. 
Commissioners  Lowell,  Ropes  and  Foster.  Report  of 
the  Committee  on  a  Reformatory  for  Women, 
Twelfth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1879,  pp.  289-292. 

1880,  Jan.  13.     Reformatories  for  women.    Thirteenth  Annual  Report, 

S.  B.  C,  1880,  pp.  173-180.    Also  in  pamphlet  form. 
Mch.  29.   Public  aid  for  private  charitable  institutions  caring 

for  dependent  children.     New  York  World,   2  col. 
Paper  read  before  the  Members  of  the  New  York  State 

Association  of  Teachers,    "Relation   of   education 

to   insanity,    crime,   and  pauperism."    New  York, 

1886.    Pamphlet,  18  p. 
Public   Charities   of   New   York   City ;    Thirteenth 

Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  137-169.    Also  in 

pamphlet  form,  32  p. 

1881,  Jan.  6.      Report  upon  the  condition  and  needs  of  the  insane  of 

New  York  City ;  Fourteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C, 

1881,  pp.  177-193. 

[July.  Considerations  upon  a  better  system  of  public  charities 
and  correction  for  cities.  Proceedings  of  the 
Eighth  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor- 
rection, Boston,  July  25-30,  1881,  pp.  168-185. 
Also  in  pamphlet  form,  18  p. 
Oct.  11.  Report  in  relation  to  out-door  relief  societies  in  New 
York  City.    Fifteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C, 

1882,  pp.  321-331. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  553 

Some  facts  concerning  the  jails,  penitentiaries,  and 
poorhouses  of  the  State  of  New  York. 
Dec.  6.  Report  on  the  State  Institutions  for  the  Deaf  and 
Dumb,  and  the  Asylum  for  Idiots.  Fifteenth  An- 
nual Report,  S.  B.  C,  1882,  pp.  117-151.  Also  in 
pamphlet  form,  35  p. 

1882,  Jan.  10.     Report  on  the  Public  Charities  of  New  York  City. 

lUd.,  pp.  28^317. 

Mch.  16.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  Stephen  Smith,  M.  D.  Report  of 
committee  to  consider  the  needs  of  the  insane  of 
New  York  City,  and  to  suggest  a  plan  for  their  care. 
Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  187S-1885,  pp.  304r-306. 

Dec.  19.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  John  C.  Devereux.  Report  of  the  Stand- 
ing Committee  on  Idiots.  Sixteenth  Annual  Report, 
S.  B.  C,  1883,  pp.  131-135. 

1883,  Jan.  10.     Report  of  the  Standing  Committee  on  the  Deaf  and 

Dumb.     Ihid.,  pp.  139-148. 

Apr.  11.  Resolution  opposed  to  the  passage  of  Assembly  Bill 
No.  654,  entitled  "An  Act  to  make  Provision  in  Aid 
of  and  for  the  Support  of  Certain  Poor  in  the  City 
of  New  York."   Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1878-1885,  p.  391. 

Oct.  10.  Report  on  the  organization  and  work  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New  York. 
Seventeenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C.  1884,  pp.  135- 
139. 
Duties  of  friendly  visitors.  Charity  Organization  So- 
ciety papers.  No.  11.  4  p. 
Report  on  the  insane  and  lunatic  asylums  of  New  York 
City.  Sixteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1883, 
pp.  151-163. 

1884,  Apr.  19.    Stewart,  W.  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell,  J.  J.  Milhau.    Report  of 

the  Special  Committee  of  the  S.  B.  C.  upon  the  man- 
agement of  the  New  York  Infant  Asylum.  Ordered 
printed  by  Board,  Dec.  16,  1884.  Pamphlet,  22  p. 
Public  Relief  and  Private  Charity.  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons,  New  York  and  London.  Ill  p.  "Questions 
of  the  Day,"  No.  XIII. 


554  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Devereux,  John  C,  J.  S.  Lowell.  Report  of  the  Stand- 
ing Committee  on  the  Deaf  and  Dumb.  Seven- 
teenth Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1884,  pp.  325-326. 

Commissioners  Lowell,  Ropes,  Ripley.  Report  of  the 
Standing  Committee  on  Outdoor  Relief.  Ibid., 
pp.  141-16L 

1885,  Mch.  16.   The  bitter  cry  of  the  poor  in  New  York.    Some  of  its 

causes  and  some  of  its  remedies;  Christian  Union, 
Vol.  XXXI,  No.  13.  3  col. 
Apr.  1.  On  the  relation  of  employers  and  employed.  A  paper 
read  at  the  Women^s  Conference  of  the  Philadelphia 
Society  for  Organizing  Charity,  April  1,  1885. 
Pamphlet  published  by  the  society.    8  p. 

1886,  Jan.  12.     Report  on  the  institutions  for  the  care  of  destitute 

children  of  the  City  of  New  York.    Nineteenth 

Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  165-243. 
Sept.         Public  outdoor  relief;     International  Record,   No.  7, 

p.  110. 
Dec.  9.      Stewart,  William  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell,  Robert  McCarthy. 

Report  of  the  Standing  Committee  on  Reformatories. 

Twentieth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1887,  pp.  165- 

214. 
Dec.  15.    Report  on  the  Public  Charities  of  New  York  City. 

Ibid.,  pp.  217-279. 

1887,  Apr.  25.    Extracts  from  a  paper  read  at  the  Woman's  Con- 

ference, "  New  York  City  Department  of  Charities." 
Pamphlet,  5  p. 

July  12.  The  Work-house,  New  York  City.  Twenty-first 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  335-346. 

Aug.  How  to  adapt  charity  organization  methods  to  small 

communities.  Proceedings  of  the  Fourteenth  Na- 
tional Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction, 
Omaha,  Neb.,  Aug.  25-31,  1887,  pp.  135-143. 

Dec.  5.  Charity  Organization.  An  address  delivered  before 
the  Women's  Christian  Conference  of  New  York 
City. 

Dec.  9.      Report  on  the  Department  of  Public  Charities  and 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  555 

Correction  of  the  City  of  New  York.     Twenty-first 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  261-271.    Also  in 
pamphlet  form. 
Report  on  the  Work-house,  New  York  City. 

1888,  Feb.  8.      Paper  read  at  first  public  meeting  of  the  Working 

Women's  Society. 

April  Paper  read  at  third  annual  meeting  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  of  Castleton.  "  Charity  Or- 
ganization Society  purposes.*'    Ms.  Pamphlet,  3  p. 

Nov.  20.  Milhau,  John  J.,  J.  S.  Lowell.  Report  in  reference 
to  insane  in  New  York  City.  Minutes,  S.  B.  C, 
188&-1890,  p.  175. 

Dec.  8.  Stewart,  William  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell.  Report  of  the 
Standing  Conmaittee  on  Reformatories.  Twenty- 
second  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  315-368. 

Dec.  12.  Report  on  the  Randall's  Island  Schools  for  Defective 
Children.  Ibid.,  pp.  431-435.  Also  in  pamphlet 
form. 

Dec.  12.  Report  on  the  Work-house,  New  York  City.  Ibid., 
pp.  419-428.  Also  in  pamphlet  form. 
Report  of  the  Standing  Conmiittee  on  Out-door  Relief. 
Twenty-third  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  349- 
371. 
Sunday  School  Talks.  Five  papers  "  Our  duties  in 
connection  with  charity  and  relief  giving;"  read 
before  the  Sunday  School  of  the  Lenox  Ave.  Uni- 
tarian Church,  New  York  City.     34  pages. 

1889,  Jan.  4.      Paper  read  before  the  League  of  Unitarian  Women. 

Ms. 
Feb.  8.      Letter  to  feather  manufacturers  of  New  York.    Ms. 

3  p. 
July  6.      Report  on  proposed  organization  of  an  asylum  for 

destitute  Italian  children  in  the  City  of  New  York. 

Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1886-1890,  pp.  209-210. 
Dec.  10.    Report  upon  the  care  of  dependent  children  in  the  City 

of  New  York  and  elsewhere.    Twenty-third  Annual 

Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  175-249. 


556  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Lowell,  J.  S.,  Robert  McCarthy.  Report  on  the  Stand- 
ing Committee  on  Reformatories.  Ibid.,  pp.  123- 
136.    Also  in  pamphlet  form. 

Report  of  the  Standing  Committee  on  the  Deaf  and 
Dmnb.    Ibid.,  pp.  139-163. 

1890,  May.        The  Economic  and  Moral  Effects  of  PubUc  Outdoor 

Relief,  Proceedings   of  the  Seventeenth  National 
Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  Baltimore, 
May  14r-21,   1890,  pp.  81-91.     Also  in  pamphlet 
form,  11  p. 
Aug.  5.      Letter  to  Board  of  Police  of  New  York  City,  re :  Police 
Matrons.     |  col. 
Out-door   ReUef.    Its    effect   upon   the   recipient. 
Twenty-fourth   Annual   Report,    S.   B.   C,    1890. 
Also  in  pamphlet  form.     8  p. 

1891,  Mch.         Book  review.     "  In  Darkest  England  and  the  Way 

Out,"  by  General  Booth,  1890.  Magazine  of 
Christian  Literature,  March,  1891,  p.  440.  3  p. 
Typewritten  copy,  11  p.  with  emendations. 
General  Booth's  book  again.  (Incomplete).  Type- 
written. 5  p. 
Nov.  Labor  organization  as  affected  by  law.  (Largely 
quotation.)  In  first  number  of  Charities  Review, 
November,  1891. 

1892,  Jan.  Need  in  New  York  City  of  Reformatory  for  Women. 

In  State  Charities  Record,  New  York,  January,  1892, 
Vol.  Ill,  No.  3,  pp.  26-27. 
July  15.    Workingmen's  Rights  in  property  created  by  them. 
Letter  to  editor  of  New  York  Times.    Also  in  pam- 
phlet form,  6  p. 
Dec.  2.      Raib-oad  Strikes.   New  York  Times,  Dec.  2, 1892,  2  col. 
The  Darkest  England  Social  Scheme.    A  brief  review 

of  the  first  year's  work.    Typewritten.     10  p. 
The  Rights  and  Wrongs  of  Strikes. 

1893,  Jan.  Industrial  Peace.    Reprinted  from  Charities  Review 

for  January,  1893.    Pamphlet.     7  p. 
May.         A   chapter    of    industrial    history.    Re:    Industrial 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  557 

Conciliation.     Mainly  translated  from  the  French. 
Reprinted  from  Chanties  Review  for  May,   1893. 
Pamphlet.     6  p. 
June.        Felix  qui  causam  rerum  cognovit.     Chanties  Review, 
June,  1893.    8  p. 

1894,  May.         Five  Months'  Work  for  the  Unemployed  in  New  York 

City.    Typewritten.     27  p. 
The    Great    Coal    Strike    of    1894.      Typewritten. 
8  p. 

Sept.  26.  The  Elmira  Reformatory.  A  Letter  to  the  Evening 
Post.     1  p. 

Sept.  The  Unemployed  in  New  York  City,  1893-1894. 
Read  before  the  American  Social  Science  As- 
sociation, at  Saratoga,  September,  1894,  and  again 
before  the  Council  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  of  Buffalo,  Oct.  3,  1894.  Printed  in 
Buffalo  Courier,  Oct.  14,  1894.     If  col. 

Oct.  9.  Letter  to  Frances  E.  Willard  advising  how  the 
W.  C.  T.  U.  can  best  help  the  working  people. 
Typewritten.   5  p. 

Oct.  20.  LoweU,  J.  S.,  FeUx  Adler,  C.  W.  Hoadley.  Com- 
mittee of  New  York  Council  of  Mediation  and  Con- 
cihation.  To  Clothing  Manufacturers  Association 
Contractors  Protective  Union  Brotherhood  of 
Tailors.  Re:  Arbitration.  Typewritten.  2  p. 
Relief  for  the  Unemployed. 

1895,  Apr.  4.      An  Example  of  Arbitration.    Reprints  from  The  Voice. 

4  p. 

May.  Poverty  and  its  relief.  The  methods  possible  in  the 
City  of  New  York.  Proceedings  of  the  Twenty- 
second  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor- 
rection, New  Haven,  Conn.,  May  24-30,  1895, 
pp.  44-54. 

June  20.  Two  much-needed  county  institutions.  A  paper  read 
at  the  Convention  of  County  Superintendents  of  the 
Poor,  Ogdensburg,  N.  Y.  Re:  Farm  colony  for 
vagrants.    9  p. 


558  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

1895,  Nov.  15.    Industrial  Peace.     Fragment.     5  p. 
Nov.  15.    County  visiting  committees.     10  p. 

Industrial  Arbitration  and  Conciliation.    Publications 

of    the   Church   Social   Union,    Series   B,    No.    8. 

Boston.     19  p. 
Charity.    To   the   Sunday    School   children   of    the 

Lenox  Ave.   Unitarian   Church,  New  York  City. 

Typewritten.     6  p. 

1896,  Jan.  Industrial  Conciliation. 

Some  American  examples  of  industrial   conciliation. 

For  "Live  Questions  Bureau."   Tjrpewritten.    lip. 
Sept.  30.   Lowell,  J.  S.,  and  others.    Homeless  men  and  women. 

A  letter  to  Commander  Booth  Tucker,  Salvation 

Army.    Typewritten.     9  p. 
Dec.  30.    The  Reform  of  the  Civil  Service  and  the  Spoils  Sys- 
tem.    Read  before  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the 

C.  S.  R.  A.  and  the  League  for  Political  Education. 

Publication  No.  2,  League  for  Political  Education. 

16  p. 
Charity  Problems.    2  col.  reprint  from  the  Chicago 

Record.   7  p. 
Relation  of  women  to  the  movement  for  reform  in 

the  Civil  Service.     National  Civil  Service  Reform 

League. 
The  true  aim  of  Charity  Organization  Societies.     The 

Forum  for  June,  1896.    Pamphlet.     7  p. 

1897,  Jan.  14.     Argument  on  the  Department  of  Public  Charities,  the 

Department  of    Correction,  and    the   payment  of 
public  funds  to  private  institutions.    Reprint.    4  p. 

Feb.  16.  The  influence  of  cheap  lodging  houses  on  city  pau- 
perism. Partly  in  Evening  Post.  Typewritten,  with 
emendations  in  ink.     13   p. 

May.  Industrial     Conciliation.       For    Brooklyn    Ethical 

Society,  May,  1898.    Typewritten.     12  p. 
Address  to  Women's  Municipal  League. 

June  29.  Civil  Service  Reform  and  Public  Charity.  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Twenty-seventh  Annual  Convention  of 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  559 

County  Superintendents  of  the  Poor,  of  the  State  of 
New  York. 

Civil  Service  Reform  is  the  People's  Cause. 

On  better  city  government  in  New  York  City  at  close 
of  Mayor  Strong's  administration.  Typewritten. 
4  p. 

The  Rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  and  Industrial  Con- 
ciliation. PubUcations  of  the  Church  Social  Union, 
No.  38,  June  15,  1897.    Boston.     Pamphlet.     23  p. 

"Your  Committee  thought  that   the   offices  of   the 
Council  might  be  useful  in  bringing  the  Affiliated- 
Trades  and  Mason  Builders  together."   Re :  Arbitra- 
tion.    1  p.,  pencil  notes. 
1898,  Aug.  Benefit  from  Police  Matrons  in  New  York  City  Station 

Houses.     Ms.     2  p. 

City  Coal. 
May.         Civil   Service  Reform.     Proceedings  of  the  Twenty- 
fifth  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correc- 
tion, New  York,  May  18-25,  1898,  pp.  256-261. 
Sept.         Woman's  Municipal  League  of  the  City  of  New  York. 
In  Municipal  Affairs,  September,  1898. 

The  Ethics  of  Civil  Service  Reform.  Address  de- 
livered in  Broadway  Tabernacle. 

The  Evils  of  Investigation  and  Relief.  A  paper  read 
before  the  training  class  in  Practical  Philanthropic 
Work,  June  21,  1898.  Reprint  from  Chanties  for 
July,  1898.    Pamphlet.    4  p. 

A   hard   lesson   in   reform.      Letter  to   New   York 
Tribune. 

Civil  Service  Reform,  Part  I.    Typewritten.    10  p. 

Civil  Service  Reform.     Typewritten.    20  p. 
Nov.  18.    Children.    Typewritten.    27  p. 

Letter  to  Evening  Post  on  Civil  Service. 

The  Living  Wage.    Ms. 

Out-door  relief  in  coal.  Report  of  Conmiittee,  Mrs. 
Lowell,  chairman. 

Spain  and  Civil  Service  Reform.  Letter  to  Evening  Post. 


560  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

What  can  young  men  do  for  the  city?    Ms. 

1899,  Feb.  4.      The  uses  and  dangers  of  investigation  in  public  and 

private   charities.      Read   before   the   New   York 

Medical  League  at  its  meeting  at  the  Academy  of 

Medicine,  Jan.    20,  1899.    In  Pvblic   and  Private 

CharitieSy  Feb.  4,  1899,  on  p.  135.    4  col.    Also  in 

Medical  News  for  Feb.  4,  1899. 
Drunkenness   and    the  evil  of   short   sentences.     A 

review  of  the  Boston  report  on  the  subject.     1  p. 

Ms +  19  typewritten. 
Feb.  6.     Relation  of  Women  to  good  Government.    Address 

to  Y.  W.  C.  A. 
Feb.  18.    Lowell,  J.  S.,  L.  D.  Wald,  E.  S.  Williams.    Emergency 

Relief  Funds.    A  letter  pubUshed  in  Charities,  Feb. 

25,   1899. 
Sept.  15.  Report  of  Committee  on  District  Work.     Charities, 

Sept.  25,  1899. 

1900,  Jan.  22.     Inspection  of  private  charities.  Charities,  Jan.  27, 1900. 

Why  day  nurseries  are  needed.    2  p. 

1901,  Committee  reports  on  Civil  Service  Reform. 

1902,  May.        Letters  to  editor  of  Charities  in  regard  to  communal 

dwellings  for  widows  with  children. 
Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 
York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs. 

1903,  June.         Letter  to  President  Roosevelt  in  behalf  of  Executive 

Committee,  Women's  Auxiliary,  Civil  Service  Re- 
form Association,  requesting  that  women   steam- 
ship inspectors  be  appointed  from  eligible  list. 
Sept.,  Oct.   Letters  to  Woman^s  Municipal  L  ague  Bulletin. 
Booker  T.  Washington.    Ms.  2  p. 
Nov.  10.   Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 
York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,   Utica, 
N.  Y.     Pamphlet.     11  p. 

1904,  Nov.  1.    Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 

York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  Syracuse, 
N.  Y.    Pamphlet.    6  p. 
England  of  1877,  —  America,  1904.    7  p. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  561 

1905.  Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 

York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs.  Bing- 
hamton,  N.  Y.  (Last  public  work  of  the  chairman, 
Mrs.  Lowell.)  Clippings  from  "Federation  Bul- 
letin" of  January,  1905.     4  col. 


2o 


TOPICAL  INDEX 

Almshouses 

1877,  Sept.  7.  Extracts  from  a  report  on  Pauperism  presented  by 
Dr.  C.  S.  Hoyt,  Secretary  of  S.  B.  C,  in  regard  to 
vagrants,  feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates  of 
the  almshouses  of  the  State. 

Charity  Organization  Society 

1883,  Oct.  10.  Report  on  the  organization  and  work  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
Seventeenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1884,  pp. 
135-139. 
Duties  of  friendly  visitors.  Charity  Organization 
Society  papers.  No.  11.    4  p. 

1885,  Mch.  16.  The  bitter  cry  of  the  poor  in  New  York.  Some  of  its 
causes  and  some  of  its  remedies ;  Christian  Union, 
Vol.  XXXI,  No.  13.    3  col. 

1887,  Dec.  5.      Charity  Organization.    An  address  delivered  before 

the  Women's  Christian  Conference  of  New  York 
City.  Newspaper.  4  col. 
Aug.  How  to  adapt  charity  organization  methods  to  small 
communities.  Proceedings  of  the  Fourteenth  Na- 
tional Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction, 
Omaha,  Neb.,  August  25-31,  1887,  pp.  135-143. 
Also  Charity  Organization  Society  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  publication  No.  32,  8  p. 

1888,  April        Paper  read  at  third  annual  meeting  of  the  Charity 

Organization    Society   of  Castleton.  Re:   Charity 
Organization  Society  Purposes.     Pamphlet,  3  p. 
1895.  The  true  Aim  of  Charity  Organization  Societies.     The 

Forum,  June,  1896.   Pamphlet,  7  p. 

562 


TOPICAL  INDEX  563 

1899j  Sept.  25.  Report  of  Committee  on  District  Work.  Charities, 
Sept.  25,  1899.     6  p. 

Children 

1886,  Jan.  12.  Report  on  the  institutions  for  the  care  of  destitute 
children  of  the  City  of  New  York.  Nineteenth 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  pp.  165-243. 

1889,  July  6.  Report  on  proposed  organization  of  an  asylum  for 
destitute  ItaUan  children  in  the  City  of  New  York. 
Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1886-1890,  pp.  20g-210. 
Dec.  10.  Report  upon  the  care  of  dependent  children  in  the  City 
of  New  York  and  elsewhere.  Twenty-third  Annual 
Report,  S.  B.  C,  175-249. 
Children.    Tjrpewritten.    27  p. 

CrviL  Service 

1896,  Dec.  30.    The  Refonn  of  the  Civil  Service  and  the  Spoils  System. 

Read  before  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the  Civil 
Service  Reform  Association  and  the  League  for 
Political  Education.  Publication  No.  2,  League 
for  Political  Education. 
Relation  of  Women  to  the  Movement  for  Reform  in 
the  Civil  Service.  National  Civil  Service  Reform 
League. 

1897,  June  29.   Civil  Service  Reform  is  the  People's  Cause. 

Civil  Service  Reform  and  Public  Charity.  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Twenty-seventh  Annual  Convention 
of  County  Superintendents  of  the  Poor  of  the 
State  of  New  York. 

1898,  May.         Civil  Service  Reform.    Proceedings  of  the  Twenty- 

fifth  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor- 
rections, New  York,  May  18-25, 1898,  pp.  256-261. 
Civil  Service  Reform,  10  p. 
Aug.  Benefit  from  Police  Matrons  in  New  York  City  Station 

Houses.    2  p.    Ms. 


564  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Oct.  15.    A   hard   lesson   in   reform.      Letter   to   New    York 

Tribune.     3  p. 
May.        Spain  and  Civil  Service  Reform.    Letter  to  Evening 
J*ost. 
1899.  Jan.  1.      Letter  to  Evening  Post  on  Civil  Service.    Ms. 

The  Ethics  of  Civil  Service  Reform.    Address  deliv- 
ered in  Broadway  Tabernacle. 

1901.  Committee  report  on  CivU  Service  Reform. 

1902.  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform, 

New  York   State   Federation  of  Women's  Clubs. 
Printed. 

1903.  June.         Letter  to  President  Roosevelt  in  behalf  of  Executive 

Conmaittee,  Women's  Auxiliary,  Civil  Servive  Re- 
form Association,  requesting  that  women  steamship 
inspectors  be  appointed  from  eUgible  list.  Ms., 
small  fragment. 
Nov.  10.  Committee  report  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 
York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  Utica, 
N.  Y.    Pamphlet.     11  p. 

1904.  Report  of  Committee  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  New 

York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  Syracuse, 
N.  Y.     Pamphlet.     6  p. 

1905.  Committee    report   on   Civil   Service   Reform,   New 

York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  Bingham- 

ton,  N.  Y.     (Last  pubhc  work  of  the  chairman,  Mrs. 

Lowell.)     Federation  Bulletin,  January,  1905.  4  col. 
Annual  Report  of  the  Women's  Auxiliary  to  the  Civil 

Service  Reform  Association. 
Civil  Service  Reform.    Typewritten.    4  p. 
Civil  Service  Reform.    Typewritten.    7  p. 
Report  of  Civil  Service  Committee.    No  date.    Ms. 

13  p. 
Two  Systems.     Ledger  article  on  Evening  Post  letter. 
Report  of  Executive  Committee  of  Women's  Auxihary 

to  Civil  Service  Reform  Association.    Addressed 

to  Original  Charter  Commission. 

Consumers'  Leagues 
Consumers'  leagues.    2  p. 


TOPICAL  INDEX  5^5 

Defectives 

1878,  Mch.  14.  Report  of  Committee  appointed  to  confer  with  Board 

of  Trustees  of  the  Idiot  Asylima,  Minutes,  S.  B.  C, 
1878-1885,  p.  15. 

1881,  Dec.  6.      Report  on  the  State  Institutions  for  the  Deaf  and 

Dumb,  and  Asylum  for  Idiots.  Fifteenth  Annual 
Report,  S.  B.  C,  1882,  pp.  [117-151.  Also  m 
pamphlet  form,  35  p. 

1882,  Dec.  19.    Lowell,  J.  S.,  John  C.  Devereux.    Report  of  the  Stand- 

ing Committee  on  Idiots.  Sixteenth  Annual  Report, 
S.  B.  C,  1883,  pp.  131-135. 

1883,  Jan.  10.     Report  of  the  Standing  Committee  on  the  Deaf  and 

Dumb.     Ihid.,  pp.  139-148. 

1884,  Devereux,   John  C,   J.   S.   Lowell.    Report   of  the 

Standing  Committee  on  the  Deaf  and  Dimib. 
Seventeenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1884,  pp. 
325-326. 

1888,  Dec.  12.    Report  on  the  Randall's  Island  Schools  for  Defective 

Children.    Twenty-second  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C, 

1888,  pp.  431-435.    Also  in  pamphlet  form. 

1889.  Report  of  the  Standing  Conmiittee  on  the  Deaf  and 

Dumb.      Twenty-third  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C, 

1889,  pp.  139-163. 

Department  of  Public  Charities 

1877,  Oct.  20.  Roosevelt,  Theodore,  J.  S.  Lowell,  Edward  C.Donnelly, 
Communication  to  the  Mayor  of  New  York  in  re- 
gard to  the  Official  Charities  of  the  city.  Eleventh 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1878,  pp.  207-225. 

1879,  Jan.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  Edward  C.  Donnelly.    Report  relating 

to  the  pubUc  charities  of  New  York  City.  Twelfth 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1879,  pp.  237-256.  Also 
in  pamphlet  form. 

1880,  Public   Charities   of   New   York   City.     Thirteenth 

Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1880,  pp.  137-169.  Also 
in  pamphlet  form,  32  p. 


566  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

1881,  July.         Considerations   upon    a    better     system    of  public 

charities  and  correction  for  cities.  Proceedings 
of  the  Eighth  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction,  Boston,  July  25-30,  1881,  pp.  168-185. 
Also  in  pamphlet  form,  18  p. 

1882,  Jan.  10.     Report  on  the  Public  Charities  of  New  York  City. 

Fifteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1882,  pp.  289-317. 

1886,  Dec.  15.    Report  on  the  PubUc  Charities  of  New  York  City. 

Twentieth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1887,  pp.  217- 
279. 

1887,  Apr.  25.    Extracts  from  a  paper  read  at  the  Woman's  Conference. 

Re:   New  York  City  Departments  of  Charities. 
Pamphlet,  5  p. 
Dec.  9.      Report  on  the  Department  of  Pubhc  Charities  and 
Correction  of  the  City  of  New  York.    Twenty-first 
Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  261-271.    Also 
in  pamphlet  form. 
1897,  Jan.  14.    Argument  on  the  Department  of  PubUc  Charities,  the 
Department  of  Correction,   and  the  payment  of 
public  funds  to  private  institutions.   Pamphlet.   4  p. 
Suggestions  regarding  the  Chapters  on  Charities  and 
Correction  in  the  proposed  Charter  for  Greater  New 
York.    No  date.    Typewritten.     4  p. 

Diary 

,  1861-1862.         A  young  girPs  wartime  diary;  July  23,  1861--Novem- 
ber  9,  1862. 

Insane 

1877,  Dec.  24.    Lowell,  J.  S.,  Edward  C.  Donnelly.    Communication 

to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  of 
the  City  of  New  York.  Eleventh  Annual  Report, 
S.  B.  C,  1878,  pp.  229-230. 

1878,  Jan.  14.    Roosevelt,  Theodore,  J.  S.  Lowell.     Conmiunication 

to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  of 
the  City  of  New  York.    Ibid.,  pp.  231-234. 


TOPICAL  INDEX       .  567 

1881,  Jan.  6.      Report  upon  the  condition  and  needs  of  the  insane  of 

New  York  City.  Fourteenth  Annual  Report, 
S.  B.  C,  1881,  pp.  177-193. 

1882,  Mch.  16.   Lowell,  J.  S.,  Stephen  Smith,  M.  D.    Report  of  com- 

mittee appointed  to  consider  the  needs  of  the  insane 
of  New  York  City,  and  to  suggest  a  plan  for  their 
care.     Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1878-1885,  pp.  304-306. 

1883,  Report  on  the  insane  and  lunatic  asylums  of  New  York 

City.    Sixteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,   1883, 
pp.  151-163. 
1888,  Nov.         Milhau,  John  J.,  Lowell,  J.  S.    Report  in  reference  to 
insane  in  New  York  City.    Minutes,   S.   B.   C, 
1886-1890,  p.  175. 

Labob 

1885,  Apr.  1.  On  the  relation  of  employers  and  employed.  Read  at 
the  Women's  Conference  of  the  Philadelphia  Society 
for  Organizing  Charity.    Pamphlet.    8  p. 

1888,  Feb.  8.      Paper  read  at  first  public  meeting  of  the  Working 

Women's  Society.    Ms. 

1889,  Feb.  8.      Letter  to  feather  manufacturers  of  New  York.    Re  : 

Union.     Ms.    3  p. 

1891,  Nov.         Labor   organization   as   affected   by   law.     (Largely 

quotation.)    Typewritten.    8  p. 

1892,  July  15.    Workingmen's  Rights  in  property  created  by  them. 

Pamphlet.    Reproduced   from  letter  to  editor  of 
New  York  Times. 
The  rights  and  wrongs  of  strikes. 
Nov.  8.     Railroad  Strikes.    New  York   Times,  Dec.  2,   1892. 
2  col. 

1893,  Jan.  Industrial  Peace.    Reprinted  from  Charities  Review, 

January,  1893.    Pamphlet,  7  p. 
May.        A  chapter  of  industrial  history.    Re:  Industrial  Con- 
ciliation.    Mainly    translated    from    the   French. 
Pamphlet.     Reprinted  from  Charities  Review,  May, 
1893.    6  p. 


568  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

1894,  Oct.  20.     Lowell,  J.  S.,  Felix  Adler,  C.  W.  Hoadley.      Com- 

mittee of  New  York  Council  of  Mediation  and  Con- 
ciliation. To  Clothing  Manufacturers  Association 
Contractors  Protective  Union  Brotherhood  of 
Tailors.  Re :  Arbitration.  Typewritten.  2  p. 
The  Great  Coal  Strike  of  1894.  Typewritten.  8  p. 
Oct.  9.  Letter  to  Frances  E.  Willard  advising  how  the 
W.  C.  T.  U.  can  best  help  the  working  people* 
Typewritten.    5  p. 

1895,  Apr.  4.      An  example  of  arbitration.    4  pages  of  reprints  from 

The  Voice. 
Nov.  15.   Industrial  Peace.    Fragment.    5  p. 
Nov.  15.   Industrial  Arbitration  and  Conciliation.    Publications 

of  the  Church  Social  Union,  Series  B,  No.  8.  Boston. 
19  p. 

1896,  Jan.  Industrial  Conciliation. 

Some  American  examples  of  industrial  conciliation. 
For  "Live  Questions  Bureau."   Typewritten.    11  p. 

1897,  May.         Industrial  Conciliation.    For  Brooklyn  Ethical  Society, 

May,  1898.    Typewritten.     14  p. 
June  15.    The  Rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  and  Industrial  Con- 
ciHation.     Publications  of  the  Church  Social  Union, 
No.  38.    Boston.    Pamphlet.    23  p. 

"  Your  Committee  thought  that  the  offices  of  the  Coun- 
cil might  be  useful  in  bringing  the  Affihated  Trades 
and  Mason  Builders  together."  Re:  Arbitration. 
1  p.,  pencil  notes. 

The  Living  Wage.    Ms. 

Address  to  Industrial  Union  of  Employers  and  Em- 
ployed, m  re:  Conciliation.  Revision  of  an  article 
published  in  Industrial  Peace.   Later  than  1884.   5  p. 

Regarding  strike  in  mines,  Sept.  12-Nov.  3,  1885.  A 
fragment.     1885  (?) 

The  Coal  Strike.  A  letter  to  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  June  25,  1893.    h  col. 

The  Coal  Strike  of  1893-4.  A  letter  to  the  New 
York  Evening  Post,  Sept.  27,  1893.    i  col, 


TOPICAL  INDEX  569 

Some  American  Examples  of  Industrial  Conciliation. 
Address  to  "The  Industrial  Union  of  Employers  and 
Employed."    A  fragment.    Ms.    2  p. 

Lowell,  J.  S.,  Felix  Adler,  and  C.  W.  Hoadley.  Effort; 
to  establish  Board  of  Conciliation  and  Arbitration 
in  Clothing  Trade  of  New  York  City.  Typewritten 
circular. 

The  rights  of  capital  and  labor.  No  date.  Tjrpewrit- 
ten.     13  p. 

Miscellaneous 

1880,  Mch.  29.  Public  aid  for  private  charitable  institutions  caring  for 
dependent  children.  New  York  World. 
Paper  read  before  the  Members  of  the  New  York  State 
Association  of  Teachers,  in  re :  Relation  of  education 
to  insanity,  crime,  and  pauperism.  Pamphlet,  New 
York,  1886.     18  p. 

1883,  Apr.  11.  Resolution  opposed  to  the  passage  of  Assembly  Bill 
No.  654,  entitled  "An  Act  to  make  Provision  in 
aid  of  and  for  the  support  of  certain  poor  in  the 
City  of  New  York."  Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1878-1885, 
p.  391. 

1889,  Jan.  4.       Paper  read  before  League  of  Unitarian  Women.    Ms. 

1897.  On  better  city  government  in  New  York  City  at  close 

of  Mayor  Strong's   administration.    Typewritten. 
4  p. 
Address  to  Women's  Municipal  League. 

1898.  What  can  young  men  do  for  the  city  ?    Ms. 

Sept.  The  Women's  Mimicipal  League  of  the  City  of 
New  York.  Municipal  Affairs,  September,  1898. 
pp.  465-466. 

1899.  Feb.  4.      The  uses  and  dangers  of  investigation  in  public  and 

private  charities.  Read  before  the  New  York 
Medical  League  at  its  meeting  at  the  Academy  of 
Medicine,  Jan.  20,  1899.  In  "Public  and  Private 
Charities,"  Feb.  4,  1899,  on  p.  135.  4  col.  Also  in 
Medical  News  for  Feb.  4,  1899. 


570  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

The  Relation  of  Women  to  Good  Government. 
1900,  Jan.  22.     Inspection  of  private  charities.    In  Chanties  j  Vol.  4, 
No.  9,  for  Jan.  27,  1900,  on  p.  4.    2  p. 
Why  day  nurseries  are  needed.    2  p. 

1902.  May.        Letters  to  editor  of  Charities^  in  regard  to  communal 

dwellings  for  widows  with  children. 

1903.  Booker  T.  Washington.    Ms.  2  p. 

Letters  to  Woman's  Municipal  League  Bulletin,  Octo- 
ber and  November,  1903. 

1904.  England  of  1877,  —  America  1904.    7  p. 
Business  administration  of  a  city.    3  p. 
Introduction  of  Dr.  Parkhurst  and  Mr.  John  Brooks 

Leavitt  at  a  Woman's  Municipal  League  meeting. 
No  date.    Typewritten.    4  p. 
Small  Towns:    Civic  activities.     No  date.     Type- 
written.   12  p. 

Outdoor  Relief 

1881,  Oct.  11.     Report  in  relation  to  Outdoor  Relief  Societies  in  New 
York  City.     Fifteenth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C, 
1882,  pp.  321-331. 
1884.  Commissioners  Lowell,  Ropes,  Ripley.    Report  of  the 

Standing  Committee  on  Outdoor  Rehef.  Seven- 
teenth Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1884,  pp.  141-161. 
Public  Relief  and  Private  Charity.  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons,  New  York  and  London.  Ill  p.  "Questions 
of  the  Day,"  No.  XIII. 
1886,  Sept.         Public  outdoor  relief.     In  IntemcUional  Record,  No.  7, 

p.  110. 

1888.  Report  of  the  Standing  Conmaittee  on  Outdoor  Relief. 

Twenty-third  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp. 

349-371. 

1890,  May.        The  Economic  and  Moral  Effects  of  Public  Outdoor 

Relief.     Proceedings  of  the  Seventeenth  National 

Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction.  Baltimore, 

May  14-21,  1890,  pp.  81-91.   Also  pamphlet,  lip. 


TOPICAL  INDEX  671 

Outdoor  Relief.  Its  effect  upon  the  Recipient. 
Twenty-fourth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1890. 
Also  in  pamphlet  form.     8  p. 

1891,  Book  review.     ''In  Darkest  England  and  the  Way 

Out,"  by  General  Booth,   1890.     In  Magazine  of 
Christian   Literature,  March,   1891,   p.   440.    3  p. 
Also  typewritten.     11  p.  with  emendations. 
General  Booth's  book  again.     (Incomplete.)     Type- 
written.    5  p. 

1892,  The  Darkest  England  Social  Scheme.    A  brief  review 

of  the  first  year's  work.    Typewritten.     10  p. 

1893,  June.         Felix  qui  cau^am    rerum    cognovit.    From    Charities 

Review,  June  1893.    8  p. 

1894,  May.         Five  Month's  Work  for  the  Unemployed  in  New  York 

City.     Charities  Review,  May,  1894. 

Relief  for  the  unemployed.    Typewritten. 

The  Unemployed  m  New  York  City,  1893-1894. 
Read  before  the  American  Social  Science  Associa- 
tion, at  Saratoga,  September,  1894,  and  again  before 
the  Council  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of 
Buffalo,  Oct.  3,  1894.  Printed  in  Buffalo  Courier, 
Oct.  14,  1894.     1^  col. 

1895,  May.        Poverty  and  its  Relief.    The  methods  possible  in  the 

City  of  New  York.  Proceedings  of  the  Twenty- 
second  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor- 
rection, New  Haven,  Conn.,  May  24-30,  1895, 
pp.  44-54. 

1896,  Jan.  Charity  Problems.    Reprint  from  the  Chicago  Record.'* 

7  p. 

1898.  Out-door  Relief  in  Coal.    Report  of  Committee,  Mrs. 

Lowell,  chairman. 
City  Coal. 
June  21.  The  Evils  of  Investigation  and  Relief.    A  paper  read 
before  the  training  class  in  Practical  Philanthropic 
Work.     Pamphlet.      Reprint   from    Charities   for 
July,  1898.    4  p. 

1899.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  L.  D.  Wald,  E.  S.  William.    Emer- 


572  JOSEPHINE   SHAW  LOWELL 

gency  Relief  Funds.    A  letter  published  in  Charities, 
Feb.  25,  1899. 
Starving  because  of  alms-giving.    No  date. 

Police  Matrons 

1890,  Aug.  5.      Letter  to  Board  of  Police  of  New  York  Gity,  Re: 
Police  Matrons. 


Reformatories 

1878,  Nov.  12.   Report  of  the  Committee  to  which  was  referred  the 

Senate  Bill  No.  322,  1878,  proposing  the  hiring  of 
buildings  as  workhouses  for  women.  Minutes, 
S.  B.  C,  1878-1885,  pp.  63-66. 

1879,  May  28.    One  means  of  preventing  pauperism,  in  re:  The  social 

harm  caused  by  vagrant  and  degraded  women. 
Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  National  Conference  of 
Charities,  Chicago,  June,  1879,  pp.  189-200. 
Pamphlet  form,  14  p. 
Commissioners  Lowell,  Ropes,  and  Foster.  Report  of 
the  Committee  on  a  Reformatory  for  Women, 
Twelfth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1879,  pp.  289- 
292. 

1880,  Jan.  13.     Reformatories  for  women.    Thirteenth  Annual  Report 

S.  B.  C,  1880,  pp.  173-180.  Also  in  pamphlet 
form. 

1881,  Some  facts  concerning  the  jails,  penitentiaries  and 

poor-houses  of  the  state  of  New  York.    4  p. 

1886,  Dec.  9.      Stewart,  William  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell,  Robert  McCarthy. 

Report  of  the  Standing  Committee  on  Reformatories. 
Twentieth  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1887,  pp.  165- 
214. 

1887,  July  12.    The    Work-house,    New    York    City.    Twenty-first 

Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  335-346. 

1888,  Dec.  8.      Stewart,  William  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell.    Report  of  the 


TOPICAL  INDEX  573 

Standing  Committee  on  Reformatories.  Twenty- 
second  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1888,  pp.  315-368. 
Dec.  12.  Report  on  the  Work-house,  New  York  City.  Ibid., 
pp.  419-428.    Also  in  pamphlet  form. 

1889.  Lowell,   J.   S.,   Robert   McCarthy.     Report   of    the 

Standing  Committee  on  Reformatories.  Twenty- 
third  Annual  Report,  S.  B.  C,  1889,  pp.  123-136. 
Also  in  pamphlet  form. 

1892,  Jan.  Need  in  New  York  City  of  reformatory  for  women. 

In  State  Charities  Record,  New  York,  January,  1892, 
Vol.  Ill,  No.  3,  pp.  26-27. 

1894.  The  Elmira  Reformatory.     Letter  to  the  Evening  Post. 
1899.  Drunkenness   and   the  evil   of  short  sentences.     A 

review  of  the  Boston  report  on  the  subject.    1  p. 
Ms.  +  18  typewritten. 
Are    labor  colonies  needed    in   the  United   States? 
Not  earlier  than  1887.    Typewritten,  14  p. 

Spanish  Wab  Papers 

Moral  deterioration  following  war.    Ms. 

Our  duties  to  the  Filipinos.     (Incomplete.)    Ms. 

Special  Investigations 

1877,  Feb.  28.  Lowell,  J.  S.,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  and  Henry  Hoguet  ; 
Report  relating  to  the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian 
Society  of  the  City  of  New  York.  Eleventh  Annual 
Report,  S.  B.  C,  1878,  pp.  99-102. 

1884,  Apr.  19.  Stewart,  W.  R.,  J.  S.  Lowell,  J.  J.  Milhau.  Report 
of  the  Special  Committee  of  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  upon  the  management  of  the  New  York 
Infant  Asylum.  Ordered  printed  by  Board,  Dec. 
16,  1884.    Pamphlet.    22  p. 

State  Charities  Aid  Association 

1895,  Nov.  15.   County  visiting  committees.    10  p. 


574  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Sunday  School  Talks 

1888.  Sunday  Talks,  in  re:  Our  duties  in  connection  with 

charity  and  relief  giving.  Five  Sundays.  Deliv- 
ered before  the  Sunday  School  of  the  Lenox  Ave. 
Unitarian  Church.    Typewritten.     34  p. 

1895.  Charity.    To  Simday  School  Children  of  the  Lenox 

Ave.   Unitarian    Church.    Typewritten.     6  p. 


Vagkants 

1877,  Sept.  4.     Report  on  Assembly  Bill  No.  79,  1877,  to  State  Board 

of  Charities.  Mrs.  Lowell  for  majority ;  Samuel  F. 
Miller  for  minority,  in  re:  Reformatory  treatment 
of  vagrants.    Pamphlet,     p.  4. 

1878,  Mch.  5.     Report  of  a  majority  of  the  Committee  on  Vagrancy. 

Mrs.  Lowell,  Chairman.  Minutes,  S.  B.  C,  1878- 
1885,  pp.  16-17. 

1895,  Two    much-needed    county   institutions.     A    paper 

read  at  the  Convention  of  County  Superintendents 
of  the  Poor,  Ogdensburg,  N.  Y.,  June  20,  1895. 
Re:  Farm  colony  for  vagrants.    Typewritten.    9  p. 

1896,  Sept.  30.   Lowell,  J.  S.,  C.  L.  Couper,   J.  A.  McKim,  R.  R. 

McBumey,  W.  H.  Tolman,  J.  L.  Thomas,  Jacob  Riis, 
H.  Folks.  Homeless  men  and  women.  A  letter  to 
Commander  Booth  Tucker,  Salvation  Army.  (Mrs. 
Lowell  believed  to  be  the  author.)  Typewritten. 
9  p. 

1897,  Feb.  16.    The  Influence  of  cheap  lodging  houses  on  city  pau- 

perism. Partly  in  Evening  Post.  Typewritten, 
with  emendations  in  ink.    12  p. 


INDEX 


Adams,  Charles  Francis,  mention  of, 
by  Mrs.  Lowell,  381,  397. 

Adler,  Dr.  Felix,  320;  address  of,  at 
memorial  meeting  in  honor  of  Mrs. 
Lowell,  519-523. 

Adult  Able-bodied  Paupers,  Mrs. 
Lowell  chairman  of  committee  on, 
72-73 ;  report  on,  in  almshouses,  73- 
74. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  4. 

Albion,  House  of  Refuge  at,  mentioned, 
101,  115;  account  of  establishment 
of,  309-310. 

Almshouses,  study  of  question  of,  by 
Mrs.  Lowell,  72-73 ;  description  of 
evil  conditions  in,  79-80 ;  investi- 
gations of,  88  S. ;  report  on  vagrant, 
feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates 
of,  89 ;  the  removal  of  children 
from,  244-246;  work  to  improve 
condition  of,  294  S. 

Andrew,  Governor  John  A.,  4,  41. 

Andrew,  Mrs.,  and  President  Lincoln, 
23. 

Association  for  Improving  the  Condi- 
tion of  the  Poor,  140. 

Baldwin,  William  H.,  520. 

Bannard,  Otto  T.,  135. 

Barlow,  Francis  C,  49,  285. 

Barlow,  Mrs.  Francis  C,  6. 

Barnard,  President,  75. 

Bedford,  N.Y.,  reformatory  for  women 
at,  101, 306-309 ;  act  establishing  the, 
310;  opening  of,  and  demonstrated 
need,  311-312;  Mrs.  Lowell's  sup- 
port of,  against  political  influences, 
312-317;  as  an  enduring  memorial 
to  Mrs.  Lowell,  549. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  4,  20. 

Bellevue  Hospital,  reform  in  regard  to 
so-called  insane  patients  at,  231- 
232. 

Bellevue  Training  School  for  Nurses, 
83. 

Bellevue  Visiting  Committee,  51, 84-85. 

Bender,  Harry  H.,  312,  313,  315. 

Berold,  the  horse,  41,  48. 


Besant,  Walter,  reference  to,  157. 
Blackwell's  Island,  almshouse  on,  295. 
Blackwell's    Island     lunatic     asylum, 

228,  229,  230-231,  233,  238. 
Blaine,  James  G.,  64. 
Blizzard  of  1888,  description  of,  66. 
Boards  of  conciliation,  359 ;  discussion 

of,  398-400,  405^08,  414. 
Bond,  Kate,  tribute  paid  by,  to  Mrs. 

Lowell,  544-545. 
Booth,  General,  quoted,  179. 
Brockway,    Superintendent,    and    the 

Elmira  Reformatory,  461. 
Brook  Farm,  2. 
Brown,  Goodwin,  242. 
Brown,  John  Crosby,  75. 
Browning,  Robert,  4. 
Bryant  Park  fountain  in  memory  of 

Mrs.  Lowell,  548-549. 
Bull,  Ole,  4. 
Bulletin,   Woman^s  Municipal  League^ 

founded     by     Mrs.     Lowell,     418; 

letters  by  Mrs.  Lowell  to,  419-422. 
Bull  Run,  Mrs.  Lowell's  diary  concern- 
ing battle  of,  10-14. 
Burlingham,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  65. 
Burnham,  E.  K.,  121. 
Burt,  Mary  T.,  328. 
Byrnes,     Superintendent,    quoted    on 

evils  of  lodging  houses,  456. 

Campbell,  Helen,  339. 

"  Capital  and  Labor,   Rights  of,   and 

Industrial  Conciliation,"  pamphlet, 

400^08. 
"  Care  of  Dependent  Children  in  the 

City  of  New  York  and  Elsewhere, 

Report  upon,"  276-283. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  letter  from,  to  Mrs. 

Lowell,  50-51. 
Carpenter,  Sarah  M.,  297. 
Carter,  James  C,  126,  310. 
Gary,  Edward,  "Life  of  George  Wil- 
liam Curtis,"   by,  475  n. ;    quoted, 

476-477. 
Gary,  Richard,  32. 
Central    Islip,    farm    colony   for   the 

insane  at,  241-243. 


575 


576 


INDEX 


Chapin,  Rev.  E.  H.,  20. 

Charities,  weekly  publication  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society,  141 ; 
articles  in,  quoted,  207-217,  223-227. 

Charities  Directory  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  141. 

Charity  and  Relief -giving,  series  of 
papers  on,  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  150. 

"Charity  Organization  Societies,  The 
True  Aim  of,"  paper  by  Mrs.  LoweU, 
196-207. 

Charity  Organization  Society  of  the 
City  of  New  York,^  founding  of,  122- 
126 ;  organization  and  work  of  the, 
130  ff. ;  oflaces  in  the  United  Chari- 
ties Building,  and  increasing  work  of, 
140;  Joint  Application  Bureau, 
Registration  and  Investigation  Bu- 
reau, and  other  departments,  140- 
141 ;  purposes  and  aims  pointed  out 
in  paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  180-184. 

' '  Charity  Problems,"  paper  on,  by  Mrs. 
Lowell,  189-196. 

Chicago,  paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell  pre- 
sented before  National  Conference 
of  Charities  and  Correction  at,  95- 
101. 

Chicago  convention  of  1892,  69. 

Child,  Lydia  Maria,  4,  17. 

Children,  work  for  dependent,  244  £f.  ; 
playgrounds  for,  255-256;  papers 
pertaining  to,  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  257- 
283. 

"  Children's  Law"  of  1875,  mentioned, 
85;  enactment  of  the,  244;  modi- 
fications of,  247,  248-249. 

Choate,  Joseph  H.,  tribute  paid  to 
memory  of  Francis  G.  Shaw  by, 
2-3 ;  speech  of,  at  meeting  of  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  75-77 ; 
mentioned,  310;  address  by,  at 
memorial  meeting  to  Mrs.  Lowell, 
525-526. 

"Civil  Service  Reform,  The  Ethics  of," 
address  on,  500-506. 

Civil  Service  Reform,  work  of  George 
William  Curtis  in  behalf  of,  477-479 ; 
Mrs.  Lowell's  activities  in  aid  of, 
480  ff. ;  prize  essays  in  connection 
with,  480-481 ;  papers  by  Mrs. 
Lowell  on  the  spoils  system  and, 
482-516. 

"Civil  Service  Reform  and  Public 
Charity,"  paper  on,  496-499. 

Civil  War  diary,  Mrs.  Lowell's,  10- 
37. 


Clarke,  Bishop,  23. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  opinions  of,  64,  67, 
69 ;  effect  of  election  of,  on  Civil 
Service  Reform,  479. 

Codman,  Nannie,  65. 

Collins,  Ellen,  8, 13,  72, 127 ;  appointed 
a  "Visitor"  by  State  Board  of 
Charities,  49 ;  works  with  Mrs. 
Lowell  in  connection  with  Freed- 
men's  Association,  49 ;  appointed 
county  visitor  of  poorhouses,  295, 
329-330;  mentioned  in  connection 
with  first  examination  conducted 
under  Civil  Service  rules,  329-330. 

Colony  treatment,  of  the  insane  and 
feeble-minded,  238-243  ;  for  paupers, 
295-296. 

Committee  for  the  Prevention  of 
Tuberculosis,  of  the  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society,  141. 

Committee  of  Seventy,  the,  416. 

Consumers'  League,  the,  334  ff. ;  Mrs. 
Lowell  as  president  of,  339,  356; 
establishment  of  national  and  for- 
eign leagues,  341-342. 

Copeland,  Morris,  26. 

County  Visiting  Committees,  Mrs. 
Lowell's  address  on,  77-85. 

Craig,  Oscar,  252,  303. 

Crowningshield,  Lieutenant  Caspar, 
13,  27. 

Curtis,  George  William,  at  Brook 
Farm,  2 ;  marriage  of  Anna  Shaw  to, 
6;  mentioned,  13,  15,  16,  25,  66; 
services  conducted  by,  at  Sailors' 
Snug  Harbor.  58;  Tavern  Club 
dinner  described,  65 ;  death  of,  68 ; 
importance  of  influence  of,  on  Mrs. 
Lowell  as  a  young  girl,  475-476; 
editor  of  Harper's  Weekly,  476; 
work  in  aid  of  Civil  Service  Reform, 
477^78. 

Cushman,  Charlotte,  4. 

Custer,  General,  on  the  death  of 
Colonel  Lowell,  47. 

Custodial  asylums  for  women,  61,  89, 
101,  306-317. 

Daniel,  Dr.  Annie  S.,  320. 

Davis,  Katharine   Bement,  letter  by, 

on  Mrs.  Lowell's  work  in  connection 

with  Bedford  reformatory,  317-319. 
Decker,   Alice   M.,    quoted   regarding 

Mrs.  Lowell,  138-139. 
De  Forest,  Robert  W.,  141 ;  eulogy  on 

Mrs.  Lowell  delivered  by,  617-519. 


INDEX 


577 


Delafield,  Rufus,  13. 

Denison,  Edward,  quoted,  178,  211. 

Deportation    of    paupers    from    other 

states  to  New  York,  300-305. 
Devereux,  J,  C,  120. 
Devine,  Edward  T.,  quoted,  142. 
Dexter,  Arthur,  13-14. 
Dickinson,  Mary  Lowe,  poem  by,  in 

memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  540-541. 
District    committees    of    the    Charity 

Organization  Society,  132,  183-184. 
Dix,  Dorothea  Lynde,  60,  78. 
Dixon,  111.,  tract  presented  to,  for  a 

park,  546-547. 
Dodge,  Grace  H.,  83,  328;    remarks 

by,  on  Mrs.  Lowell,  545. 
Dodge  family  as  charity  workers,  129. 
Donnelly,  Commissioner,  88,  229. 
Drummond,   Henry,   quotation  from, 

188-189. 
Duties  of  Friendly  Visitors,  paper  on, 

by  Mrs.  Lowell,  142-150. 
Dwight,  Theodore  W.,  284. 
Dwight,  Wilder,  34. 

East  Side  Relief  Work,  361  £f. 
"Economic  and  Moral  Effects  of  Public 

Outdoor    Relief,"    paper    on,    158- 
174. 
Education   of   children,    a   paper   on, 

257-267. 
Elmira  Reformatory,  letter  concerning 

Mr.  Brockway  and  the,  461. 
"Emergency   Relief    Funds,"    article 

on,  223-227. 
Emerson,     Edward     W.,     "Life     and 

Letters  of  Charles  Russell  Lowell," 

by,  39  n. ;  quoted,  45,  46. 
Emerson,    Ralph   Waldo,    4 ;     quoted 

apropos  of  rights  of  employees,  354. 
"Employees,  Property  Rights  of,"  Dr. 

Jacobi's  paper  on,  quoted,  350-356. 
England,  consumers'  league  in,  342. 
"Ethics    of    Civil    Service    Reform," 

address  on,  500-506. 
Europe,  consumers'  leagues  in,  342. 
European  visits,  Mrs.  Lowell's,  5,  50 ; 

letters    to     Mrs.     Shaw    regarding 

(1892),  67-68. 
Evans,  Annie  Jackson,  480-481. 
"  Evils  of  Investigation  and  Relief," 

paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  207-217. 

"Facts  for  Fathers  and  Mothers," 
Bishop  Potter's  pamphlet,  417-418, 
421. 


Fairchild,  Charles  S.,  69,  126,  417 ;   a 

letter  to,  366-367. 
Fanning,  Mr.,  letters  to,  109,  112-114, 

247,  253. 
Farm  colonies,  for  the  insane,  238-239, 

240-243  ;  for  paupers,  295,  296-297. 
Feeble-minded   women,   first    asylums 

for,    the    results    of    Mrs.    Lowell's 

efforts,  61 ;  account  of  establishment 

of  custodial  asylums,  89,  101,  115- 

121,  306-317. 
Field,  Benjamin  H.,  75. 
Finley,   John  H.,   310 ;    poem  by,   in 

memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  541-542. 
Flint,  Dr.  Austin,  Jr.,  75. 
Florence,  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell  in, 

68. 
Floyd,  Mrs.  Nicoll,  366  n. 
Forbes,  Alice,  21. 
Forbes,  John  M.,  18  n.,  19. 
Forbes,  William,  19. 
Ford,  Louise  F.,  quoted  regarding  Mrs. 

Lowell,  139-140. 
Forum,  article  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  196- 

207. 
Foster,  Commissioner,  88. 
Fountains  erected  as  memorials  to  Mrs. 

Lowell,  547,  548. 
Freedmen's  Association,  formation  of, 

and  work  of  Mrs.  Lowell  for,  48-49. 
Fremont,  General,  18,  19,  20. 
Friendly  visitors,  132,  138;    paper  on 

duties  of,  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  142-150. 
Fry,  Elizabeth,  60;   work  of,  referred 

to  by  Mrs.  LoweU,  103. 
Fuller,  Margaret,  4. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  4. 

Gay,  Sidney  Howard,  16,  23. 

George,  Henry,  417. 

Gibbons,  Abby  Hopper,  306,  307,  309, 
321,  322  ;  work  of,  in  securing  estab- 
lishment of  reformatory  for  women 
at  Bedford,  310. 

Gibbs,  Theodore  Kane,  289. 

Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  poem  by,  on 
"Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,"  634-535. 

Grannis,  Mrs.  E.  B.,  328. 

Greeley,  Miriam  Mason,  482-483. 

Greene,  Colonel  William,  13,  21. 

Greenough,  Annie,  21. 

Grimes,  Frances,  seal  designed  by,  481. 

Gurteen,  Rev.  S.  H.,  126. 

Haggerty,  Anna  (Mrs.  Robert  Gould 
Shaw),  37,  42. 


2p 


578 


INDEX 


Hall,  Dr.  John,  127. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  Jr.,  75. 

Harper's  Weekly,  G.  W.  Curtis's 
editorship  of,  476. 

Hart's  Island,  insane  asylum  on,  242. 

Hebberd,  Robert  W.,  311,  313;  hos- 
pital boat  named  after  Mrs.  Lowell, 
by,  547-548. 

Hewitt,  Abram  S.,  126,  359;  quoted, 
154-155;  letter  from,  to  Mrs. 
Lowell,  360-361. 

Hewitt,  Mrs.  E.  H.,  417  n. 

Higginson,  Henry  L.,  65  ;  presentation 
of  memorial  fountain  to  Radcliffe 
College  by  Mrs.  Higginson  and,  547. 

Hill,  David  B.,  307. 

Hill,  Octavia,  61 ;  references  to,  150, 
223. 

Hoguet,  Henry  L.,  284-285. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  13,  21,  25. 

Hooper,  Clover,  26. 

Hooper,  Dr.  R.  W.,  24. 

Hopper  Home,  The,  320,  451. 

Hospital  Book  and  Newspaper  Society, 
83. 

Hospital  steamboat  named  in  honor  of 
Mrs.  Lowell,  547-548. 

Houses  of  Refuge,  101,  108-114,  30&- 
317. 

House  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  the, 
451. 

Howard,  Rose,  65. 

Howson,  Dean,  50. 

Hoyt,  Dr.  Charles  S.,  244,  287. 

Hudson,  N.  Y.,  reformatory  for  women 
at,  101,  108-114 ;  pronounced  suc- 
cess of,  leading  to  establishment  of 
Albion  and  Bedford  reformatories, 
306. 

Huntington,  Rev.  James  O.  S.,  tribute 
paid  to  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell  by, 
523-524. 

Huntington,  Dr.  William  Reed,  Mrs. 
Lowell's  funeral  conducted  by,  59. 

Idiots,  campaign  for  a  State  custodial 
asylum  for,  115-121.  See  Feeble- 
minded women. 

Imprisonment  of  witnesses,  letter  con- 
cerning, 460, 

Independent,  memorial  notice  of  Mrs. 
Lowell  in,  532. 

Indiana,  Reformatory  Institution  for 
Women  in,  103-104. 

"Industrial  Conciliation,"  paper  on, 
394-400. 


"  Industrial  Peace,"  paper  on,  380-390. 
Infant  Asylum,  the  New  York,  investi- 
gation of,  288-293. 
"  Influence  of  Cheap  Lodging  Houses 

on  City  Pauperism,"  paper  on,  453- 

459. 
Insane,  activity  of  Mrs.  Lowell  for  the 

welfare  of  the,  228-243. 
Inspection    of    private    charities,    the, 

462^66. 
Invasion  of  privacy  of  other  lives  as  an 

evil  of  investigation,  221, 
"Investigation  and  Relief,  The  Evils 

of,"  paper  on,  207-217. 
"  Investigation  in  Public  and  Private 

Charities,    Uses    and    Dangers    of," 

paper  on,  217-223. 
Investigations  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  of  New 

York  Juvenile  Asylum,  246 ;  of  New 

York    Juvenile    Guardian    Society, 

284-286;      of     New    York     Infant 

Asylum,  288-293. 
Iselin,  Henry,  135. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  5 ;  a  reference  to,  by 
Mrs.  Lowell,  371. 

Jacobi,  Dr.  Mary  P.,  136,  339;  paper 
by,  on  "Property  Rights  of  Employ- 
ees," quoted,  350-356. 

James,  Henry,  Sr.,  5;   quoted,  35,  36. 

James,  Wilkie,  36. 

Jay,  John,  128. 

Joint  Application  Bureau,  the,  140. 

Joint  boards,  discussion  of,  398-400, 
405-408,  414. 

Juvenile  Guardian  Society,  investiga- 
tion of  the,  284-286;  corporate 
rights  of,  annulled  by  judgment  of 
Supreme  Court,  288. 

Kellogg,  Charles  D.,  quoted  regarding 

Mrs.  Lowell,  131,  137-138. 
Kemble,  Fanny,  4. 
Kennedy,    John   S.,    United   Charities 

Building  erected  by,  140. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  4,  50. 
Kohan,  Joseph  H,,  prize  Civil  Service 

Reform  essayist,  481. 

Labor,   work  in   behalf   of,   by   Mrs. 

Lowell,  359-372. 
Labor  Bureau  Association,  135. 
Labor     questions,     papers     by     Mrs. 

LoweU  on,  372-415. 
Labor  Test  Wood  Yard,  136. 
Lee,  Henry,  65. 


INDEX 


579 


Letchworth,  W.  P.,  87,  120  ;  letters  to, 
87,  95,  230,  233-234,  248-249,  253, 
254,  298,  299,  301,  309;  inspection 
and  study  of  European  treatment  of 
feeble-minded  and  insane,  240  ; 
work  in  behalf  of  dependent  children, 
244-246;  "Report  on  Orphan  Asy- 
lums, Reformatories,"  etc.,  by,  245- 
246. 

Lewis,  Charlton  T.,  debate  with  Mrs. 
Lowell,  370-371. 

Lexow  Committee,  the,  416. 

Library  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society,  141. 

Lincklaen,  Mrs.,  69. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  21-22,  26-27,  29, 
33  ;  anecdotes  concerning,  23  ;  Mr. 
Shaw's  meeting  with  and  opinion  of, 
25 ;  cited  by  Mrs.  Lowell  in  discuss- 
ing the  Philippine  question,  470. 

Livingston,  Robert  J.,  75. 

"Living  Wage,  The,"  paper  on,  409- 
415. 

Lodging  houses,  evils  of  cheap,  446- 
459. 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  4. 

Low,  Seth,  126,  417,  548 ;  address  of, 
at  memorial  meeting,  529-530. 

Lowell,  Carlotta  Russell,  48,  546. 

Lowell,  Charles  Russell,  19  n. ;  engage- 
ment of,  to  Josephine  Shaw,  38 ; 
family  and  career  of,  38^0 ;  dis- 
tinguished war  services  of,  40-41 ; 
organizes  Second  Massachusetts 
Cavalry,  41 ;  letters  by,  on  death  of 
Robert  Gould  Shaw,  44;  marriage 
to  Miss  Shaw,  45;  further  army 
career  and  death,  46-47. 

Lowell,  James,  killed  at  Glendale,  30, 
40. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  4,  65. 

Lowell,  Josephine  Shaw,  birth  and 
parentage,  1-5 ;  first  European  visit 
(1851),  5;  childhood  of ,  5-8 ;  work 
in  Woman's  Central  Relief  Associa- 
tion, 8-9  ;  war-time  diary  of,  10-37 ; 
engagement  to  Charles  Russell 
Lowell,  38;  marriage  to  Colonel 
Lowell,  45;  work  of,  in  connection 
with  Freedmen's  Association,  48—49  ; 
visit  to  Europe  in  1870,  50 ;  letter  to, 
from  Carlyle,  50-51 ;  becomes  inter- 
ested in  charitable  work,  51 ;  her 
home  at  130  East  30th  St.,  New 
York  City,  51-52 ;  appointment  as 
commissioner   of   New   York   State 


Board  of  Charities,  52;  effective 
work  of,  52-56;  dress,  personal 
appearance,  etc.,  56-58;  church 
connections,  58;  her  death,  59; 
place  of,  among  leaders  in  charitable 
work,  61 ;  letters  to  Mrs.  R.  G.  Shaw 
describing  acti\'ities  of,  62-71 ;  work 
in  connection  with  the  State  Chari- 
ties Aid  Association,  72  ff. ;  poor- 
house  reforms  effected  by,  72-83 ; 
Joseph  H.  Choate's  public  reference 
to  work  of,  76;  address  of,  on 
County  Visiting  Committees,  77- 
85;  activities  as  a  member  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities,  87  ff. ;  ap- 
pointed chairman  of  committee  on 
vagrants,  etc.,  88;  Report  on 
pauperism  in  regard  to  vagrant, 
feeble-minded,  and  idiotic  inmates 
of  almshouses,  89 ;  the  papers  on 
"One  Means  of  Preventing  Pauper- 
ism and  Crime,"  and  "Reformatories 
for  Women,"  94-105 ;  paper  on 
"Some  Facts  concerning  the  Jails, 
Penitentiaries,  and  Poorhouses  of 
the  State  of  New  York,"  106 ;  efforts 
of,  result  in  establishment  of  House 
of  Refuge  at  Hudson,  108-111 ;  con- 
tinued interest  of,  in  Hudson  reform- 
atory, 112-114;  campaign  for  a 
State  custodial  asylum  for  feeble- 
minded women,  115  ff.;  work  in 
connection  with  the  Custodial  Asy- 
lum at  Newark,  118-121;  the 
Charity  Organization  of  the  City  of 
New  York  founded  through  efforts  of, 
122  ;  "Report  in  Relation  to  Out-door 
Relief  Societies  in  New  York  City" 
by,  123-125;  letters  of,  in  regard 
to  Charity  Organization  Society  and 
other  sociological  subjects,  127-130, 
135-136;  report  on  "The  Organi- 
zation and  Work  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society,"  131-134 ; 
paper  on  "Duties  of  Friendly  Visi- 
tors," 142-150;  Sunday  School 
addresses  to  children,  150-158 ; 
paper  on  "The  Economic  and  Moral 
Effects  of  Public  Outdoor  Relief," 
158-174 ;  paper  on  "Poverty  and  its 
Relief :  the  Methods  Possible  in  the 
City  of  New  York,"  175-189 ;  paper 
on  "Charity  Problems,"  189-196; 
paper  on  "The  True  Aim  of  Charity 
Organization  Societies,"  196-207; 
paper  on  "The  Evils  of  Investiga- 


580 


INDEX 


Lowell,  Josephine  Shaw  —  continued. 
tion  and  Relief,"  207-217 ;  paper  on 
"Uses  and  Dangers  of  Investigation 
in  Public  and  Private  Charities," 
217-223;  paper  on  "Emergency 
Relief  Funds,"  223-227;  "Report 
upon  the  Condition  and  Needs  of  the 
Insane  of  New  York  City,"  231 ; 
reform  effected  by,  regarding  insane 
at  Bellevue  Hospital,  231-232 ;  de- 
scription of,  at  Ward's  Island  insane 
asylum,  238;  work  for  dependent 
children,  244  ff. ;  reports  by,  on 
condition  of  dependent  children  and 
orphan  asylum  societies,  246,  249 ; 
letter  concerning  proposed  orphan 
asylum  of  Italian  Sisters  of  the  Order 
of  St.  Francis  of  Sales,  250-251; 
interest  in  playgrounds  for  children, 
255-256;  and  in  recreation  piers, 
256 ;  paper  read  before  New  York 
State  Association  of  Teachers,  257- 
267;  paper  entitled  "Children," 
267-276 ;  special  investigations  for 
the  State  Board  of  Charities,  284  ff. ; 
the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian 
Society,  284-288;  the  New  York 
Infant  Asylum,  288-293  ;  reports  on 
pauperism,  Westchester  County 
Poorhouse,  etc.,  296 ;  investigation 
of  the  question  of  Massachusetts 
paupers,  300-305;  efforts  for  addi- 
tional reformatories  for  women, 
resulting  in  those  at  Albion  and  Bed- 
ford, 306  ff. ;  support  of  cause  of  re- 
formatory at  Bedford  against  adverse 
influences,  312  ff. ;  work  in  founding 
the  Consumers'  League,  337  ff. ; 
presidency  of  the  League  held  by, 
339,  356 ;  work  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  labor,  357  ff. ;  relief  work  on 
the  East  Side,  361-365 ;  paper  read 
at  first  public  meeting  of  the  Work- 
ing Women's  Society  (Cooper  Union, 
1888),  372-380;  paper  on  "Indus- 
trial Peace,"  380-390 ;  paper  on 
"  Workingmen's  Rights  in  Property 
created  by  Them,"  390-394 ;  paper  on 
"Industrial  Conciliation,"  394-400; 
paper  on  "The  Rights  of  Capital 
and  Labor  and  Industrial  Concilia- 
tion," 400-408;  paper  on  "The 
Living  Wage,"  409-415 ;  work  in 
connection  with  the  Woman's  Muni- 
cipal League  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  416  ff . ;    Woman's  Municipal 


League  Bulletin  founded  by,  418; 
letters  to  the  Municipal  League 
Bulletin  concerning  municipal  re- 
form, 419-422 ;  paper  on  "  What  can 
Young  Men  do  for  the  City,"  422- 
435;  paper  on  "The  Relation  of 
Women  to  Good  Government,"  435- 
445 ;  letter  to  Commander  Booth 
Tucker  concerning  evils  of  cheap 
lodging  houses,  446-453 ;  paper  on 
"The  Influence  of  Cheap  Lodging 
Houses  on  City  Pauperism,"  453- 
459 ;  letter  concerning  the  imprison- 
ment of  witnesses,  460 ;  letter  on  the 
Elmira  Reformatory  and  Superin- 
tendent Brockway,  461 ;  paper  on 
"The  Inspection  of  Private  Chari- 
ties," 462^66;  paper  on  "Moral 
Deterioration  following  War,"  466- 
470;  remarks  on  Booker  T.  Wash- 
ington, 471-473 ;  proposed  model 
tenements  for  widows  with  small 
children,  473^74;  influence  of 
George  William  Curtis  on,  475-476 ; 
interest  in  Civil  Service  Reform,  479 ; 
forms  a  Woman's  Auxiliary  to  the 
Civil  Service  Reform  Association, 
480 ;  work  for  Civil  Service  Reform 
and  papers  and  letters  concerning, 
481-516;  memorial  meetings  and 
notices  in  honor  of  memory  of,  517- 
649 ;  tract  of  land  presented  to  city 
of  Dixon,  111.,  by  daughter  of,  546- 
547;  fountain  at  Radcliffe  College 
as  a  memorial  to,  547 ;  hospital 
steamboat  named  after,  by  R.  W. 
Hebberd,  547-548;  fountain  in 
Bryant  Park,  in  memory  of,  548-549 ; 
cottages  named  for,  at  Hudson  and 
Bedford,  549. 

Lowell  family,  the,  38-39. 

Lunatic  asylums,  efforts  for  improve- 
ment of,  228-243. 

MacDonald,  Dr.  A.  E.,  230,  241. 
MacDonald,  Dr.  Carlos  F.,  242. 
Magdalen  Benevolent  Society,  the,  451. 
Massachusetts,  reformatory  prison  for 

women  in,    104 ;    investigation  and 

report  on  paupers  sent  to  New  York 

from,  300-305. 
Mead,  Edwin,  D.,  on  "Josephine  Shaw 

Lowell  and  the  Peace  Movement," 

537-540. 
Medical  News,  article  by  Mrs.  Lowell, 

217-223. 


INDEX 


581 


Memorial    meetings,     addresr-S,     £tnd 

notices,  517-549. 
Mifflin,  Eugenia,  32. 
Miller,  Joaquin,  lines  by,  57-58. 
Miller,    Joseph    Dana,    poem    by,    in 

memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  536-537. 
Minturn,  Mrs.  Robert   Bowne,  6,  65, 

66. 
Model  tenements  for  widows  with  small 

children,  proposition  looking  toward, 

473-474. 
"Moral  Deterioration  following  War," 

paper  on,  466-470. 
Morris,  Dr.  Moreau,  255. 
Municipal  lodging  houses,  137,  446  fif. 

Nadal,  E.  S.,  quoted  concerning  George 
William  Curtis,  478. 

Naples,  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Lowell,  in, 
67. 

Nathan,  Mrs.  Frederick,  339,  340. 

National  Consumers'  League,  341-342. 

Negro  regiments,  organization  of,  41- 
42. 

Newark,  N.  Y.,  Custodial  Asylum  at, 
118-121,  549. 

Newport,  visits  to,  6,  17-18. 

Newton,  Rev.  Heber,  127. 

New  York  City,  relief -giving  in,  175- 
189. 

New  York  Infant  Asylum,  investiga- 
tion of  the,  288-293. 

New  York  Juvenile  Asylum,  246. 

New  York  Juvenile  Guardian  Society, 
investigation  of  the  affairs  and  man- 
agement of  the,  284-286. 

New  York  State  Training  School  for 
Girls,  112.    See  Hudson  reformatory. 

Nightingale,  Florence,  60. 

Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  65. 

Oakey,  Daniel,  32. 

O'Conner,  Charles,  74-75. 

Odell,  B.  B.,  and  the  reformatory  at 

Bedford,  312,  314. 
"One  Means  of  Preventing  Pauperism 

and    Crime,"    paper    on,    94,    95  ; 

quoted,  96-101. 
Opdyke,  George,  22. 
Ophthalmia  among  children,  281. 
Orphan   asylums,    reformatories,    etc., 

report   on,    by   W.    P.    Letchworth, 

245-246. 
Outdoor  Recreation  League,  the,  256. 
Outdoor  relief,  paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell 

on,  158-174. 


Outlook,     editorial     from, 
Lowell,  532-534. 


on     Mrs. 


Parkhurst,  Rev.  Charles  H.,  416,  417. 

Parkman,  Samuel,  3. 

Parkman,  Francis,  4. 

Paupers,    improvement    of    condition 

of,    294-300;     from    Massachusetts, 

300-305. 
Peirson,  Mrs.  Charles  L.,  36. 
Peirson,  S.  S.,  address  by,  and  tribute 

to  Mrs.  Lowell,  119-121. 
Pellew,    Henry    E.,    124;     appointed 

county  visitor  of  poorhouses,  296. 
Penny  Provident  Fund,  the,  137. 
Perkins,  L.  S.  W.,  136,  334. 
Philippine  question,  discussion  of  the, 

466-470. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  4. 
Pierce,  James  N.,  biography  of  C.  R. 

Lowell  by,  39  n. 
Playgrounds  for  Children,  255-256. 
Poems  in  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  534- 

537,  540-542. 
Police  lodging  houses,  448. 
Police  Matron  Law,  65,  322-323. 
Police  matrons,  the  crying  need  for, 

and  work  resulting  in  appointment 

of,  320-333. 
Poorhouses,  study  of,  72-73 ;    descrip- 
tion by  Mrs.  Lowell  of  horrors  of, 

79-80;     investigations    of,    88    ff. ; 

removal  of  children  from,  244-246 ; 

work  to  improve  condition  of,  294- 

305.    See  Almshouses. 
Porter,  Henry  H.,  241. 
Potter,  Bishop  Henry  C,  232;    pam- 
phlet  by,    "Facts  for  Fathers   and 

Mothers,"  417-418,  421. 
Potter,  Howard,  75. 
"Poverty  and  its  ReUef :  the  Methods 

Possible  in  the  City  of  New  York," 

paper  on,  175-189. 
Powell,  Rachel  H.,  307. 
Prime,  Temple,  295. 
Private  charities,  inspection  of,  462—466. 
Prize  competitions  for  essays  on  Civil 

Service  Reform  subjects,  480-481. 
"Property  Rights  of  Employees,"  Dr. 

Jacobi's  paper  on,  350-356. 
Pruyn,  John  V.  L.,  87. 
Putnam,  Elizabeth  C,  quoted,  38. 
Putnam,  Mrs.  George,  52. 

Quincy,    Samuel,   mention   of,   in   the 
wartime  diary,  32. 


582 


INDEX 


Radcliffe  College,  memorial  fountain  to 
Mrs.  Lowell  at,  547. 

Randall's  Island  Visiting  Committee, 
85. 

Recreation  piers,  256. 

Reeves,  Henry  A.,  242. 

Reformatories  for  women,  88  &.,  101 
306-319. 

"  Reformatories  for  Women,"  paper  on 
94,  95 ;  quoted,  102-105. 

"  Reform  of  the  Civil  Service,  and  the 
Spoils  System,"  paper  on,  483-496. 

Registration  and  Investigation  Bureau 
of  the  Charity  Organization  Society, 
140-141. 

Registration  system  of  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society,  133,  134. 

"  Relation  of  Women  to  Good  Govern- 
ment," paper  on,  435^45. 

"  Relief,  The  Evils  of  Investigation 
and,"  paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  207- 

:  ;217. 

"Relief  Funds,  Emergency,"  article 
on,  223-227. 

Relief-giving,  paper  by  Mrs.  Lowell, 
on  economic  and  moral  effects  of, 
158-174. 

Relief  of  poverty  in  city  of  New  York, 
paper  concerning,  175-189. 

"Report  in  Relation  to  Outdoor  Relief 
Societies  in  New  York  City,"  123- 
125. 

"Report  on  Orphan  Asylums,  Re- 
formatories," etc.,  by  W.  P.  Letch- 
worth,  245-246. 

Rice,  Mrs.  William  B.,  8,  136-137. 

Richmond  County  Poorhouse,  72-73, 
294,  298-299. 

"Rights  of  Capital  and  Labor  and  In- 
dustrial Conciliation,"  pamphlet, 
400-408. 

Riis,  Jacob  A,,  memorial  address  in 
honor  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  526-529. 

Robbins,  Dr.  Jane  E.,  359,  365,  367; 
quoted,  368-369. 

Rogers,  Thorold,  quoted  by  Mrs. 
Lowell,  415. 

Roosevelt,  James,  75. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  member  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities,  75 ;  men- 
tioned, 228,  229,  242,  284-286; 
death  of,  286-287. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore  (later  President), 
account  of  a  talk  with,  '64 ;  an  opin- 
ion of,  70-71 ;  and  the  investiga- 
tion of  the  New  York  Infant  Asy- 


lum, 289-293;  mentioned,  311,  312, 

436,  482,  512,  528. 
Roosevelt  family  as  charity  workers, 

129. 
Russell,  Henry  S.,  13,  27. 
Russell,  Mrs.  Henry  S.,  357. 
Russell,  Lucy,  65. 

Sailors'  Snug  Harbor,  Staten  Island,  5, 
58. 

Saint  Gaudens  and  the  Shaw  Monu- 
ment, 44,  69,  70. 

Salvation  Army  lodging  houses,  letter 
on,  446-453. 

Sayward,  William  H.,  quoted,  397. 

Schieffelin,  Mrs.  W.  H.,  480;  minute 
concerning  Mrs.  Lowell  presented 
by,  to  the  Woman's  Auxiliary,  545- 
546. 

School  of  Philanthropy,  the,  141. 

Schuyler,  George  L.,  75. 

Schuyler,  Louisa  Lee,  11,  13,  36,  51,  72, 
79,  128,  310;  president  of  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  74 ;  leads 
agitation  in  behalf  of  proper  care 
of  the  insane,  242;  tribute  paid 
to  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell  by,  543- 
544. 

Seventh  Regiment  N.  Y.  N.  G.,  7-8. 

Shaw,  Anna,  sister  of  Josephine  Shaw 
Lowell  and  wife  of  George  William 
Curtis,  6. 

Shaw,  Ellen,  sister  of  Josephine  Shaw 
Lowell  and  wife  of  General  F.  C. 
Barlow,  6. 

Shaw,  Francis  George,  father  of  Jo- 
sephine Shaw  Lowell,  1-2;  tribute 
paid  to,  by  Joseph  H.  Choate,  3; 
death  of,  52. 

Shaw,  Joseph  Coolidge,  uncle  of  Jo- 
sephine Shaw  Lowell,  5. 

Shaw,  Mary  Sturgis,  34. 

Shaw,  Robert  Gould,  grandfather  of 
Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  1. 

Shaw,  Robert  Gould,  brother  of  Jo- 
sephine Shaw  Lowell,  6 ;  description 
of,  at  opening  of  war,  8 ;  departure 
of,  for  the  war,  14 ;  wartime  reports 
of,  21,  25,  26-27,  28,  37;  army 
career  of,  41 ;  made  colonel  of  Fifty- 
fourth  Massachusetts  Volunteer  In- 
fantry, 42 ;  death  of,  at  Fort  Wagner, 
43-44. 
Shaw,  Mrs.  Robert  Gould  (Anna 
Haggerty),  37,  42;  letters  of  Mrs. 
LoweU  to,  62-71,  127-130,  136  fif. 


INDEX 


583 


Shaw,  Major  Samuel,  of  Revolutionary 
times,  1,  15,  69. 

Shaw,  Sarah  Blake  Sturgis,  mother  of 
Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  3-4. 

Shaw,  Susannah,  sister  of  Josephine 
Shaw  Lowell,  and  wife  of  R.  B. 
Minturn,  6,  37. 

Shaw  Monument,  Boston,  8,  44,  69, 
70. 

Smith,  Marion  Couthony,  480. 

Smith,  Dr.  Samuel  Wesley,  242. 

Smith,  Dr.  Stephen,  232,  242;  ap- 
pointed State  Commissioner  in 
Lunacy,  234. 

Society  for  Instruction  in  First  Aid  to 
the  Injured,  83. 

"  Some  Facta  concerning  the  Jails, 
Penitentiaries,  and  Poorhouses  of  the 
State  of  New  York,"  paper  on,  106. 

"  Spain  and  Civil  Service  Reform," 
letter  to  Evening  Post  on,  506-509. 

Spoils  system.  See  Civil  Service  Re- 
form. 

State  Board  of  Charities,  Mrs.  Lowell's 
work  as  a  commissioner  of  the,  52- 
56,  87  ff. ;  special  investigations 
conducted  for,  246,  284-293;  ap- 
proval of,  necessary  for  certificates 
of  incorporation  of  private]  charit- 
able institutions,  249-250;  Mrs. 
Lowell's  reasons  for  resigning  from, 
357-359. 

State  Care  Act,  the,  for  the  insane, 
242. 

State  Charities  Aid  Association,  forma- 
tion of,  and  Mrs.  Lowell's  work  in 
connection  with,  72  ff. 

State  Commission  in  Lunacy,  estab- 
lishment of,  242. 

Staten  Island,  residence  of  Shaw 
family  on,  5-7. 

Station  houses,  change  effected  in,  by 
appointment  of  police  matrons,  331- 
333. 

Stevens,  Gertrude  Rice,  72,  128. 

Stewart,  William  R.,  65,  311 ;  service 
on  the  Standing  Committee  on  the 
Insane,  237-239 ;  remarks  at  mem- 
orial meeting  in  honor  of  memory  of 
Mrs.  Lowell,  530. 

Stover,  Charles  B.,  mentioned  by  Mrs. 
Lowell,  365. 

Strikes,  effort  at  prevention  of,  357, 
361,  366,  368,  369 ;  papers  touching 
on  matter  of,  372-415. 

Strong,  William  L.,  416. 


Sturgis,  Harry,  13. 

Sturgis  family,  the,  3. 

Sumner,  Charles,  4. 

Sun,  articles  in  the,  in  connection  with 

police  matron  agitation,   328,   331- 

332. 
Sunday    School    addresses    by    Mrs. 

LoweU,  150-158. 
Survey,  The,  141. 
Syracuse,  State  Idiot  Asylima  at,  118. 

Tailors'  strikes,  366-369. 

Tavern  Club  dinner  to  George  William 

Curtis,  65. 
Teachers,  paper  read  before  New  York 

State  Association  of,  257-267. 
Tenement   House    Committee   of   the 

Charity  Organization  Society,  141. 
Tenney,  Sarah  E.,  271. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  4. 
Thomas,  Theodore,  5. 
Thoreau,  Henry  D.,  4. 
Tilden,      Governor,      appoints      Mrs. 

Lowell  conunissioner  of  State  Board 

of  Charities,  52 ;  mentioned,  75. 
Times,  letter  by  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the, 

361. 
Tolstoi,  reference  to,  157. 
Tramps  in  poorhouses,  72-74,  89,  296- 

297 ;      letters    and    papers    dealing 

with,  446-459. 
Trow,  E.,  quoted  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  407- 

408. 
"True  Aim    of    Charity  Organization 

Societies,"  paper  on  the,  196-207. 
Tuberculosis,  Committee  for  the  Pre- 
vention of,  141. 
Tucker,  Commander  Booth,  letter  to, 

446^53. 
Tweedy,  Edmund,  quoted,  385-387. 

United  Charities  Building,  140. 
"Uses  and  Dangers  of  Investigation  in 

Public  and  Private  Charities,"  paper 

on,  217-223. 

Vagrants,  discussion  of,  446-459.  See 
Tramps. 

"Valley  of  Industry  and  Hill  of  Pros- 
perity," allegory,  166-170. 

Vanderpoel,  Samuel  Oakley,  first  presi- 
dent of  Charity  Organization  So- 
ciety of  the  City  of  New  York,  126. 

Van  Wyck,  Mayor,  417,  436. 

Visiting  Committee  of  Bellevue  and 
other  Hospitals,  51. 


584 


INDEX 


Visitors,  Friendly,  132,  138 ;  paper  on 
duties  of,  142-150. 

Visitors  of  poorhouses  and  other  insti- 
tutions, 294r-295. 

Wages  boards,  398^00,  405-408,  414. 
Wald,    Lillian    D.,    quoted    on    Mrs. 

Lowell's  methods  of  work,  362-364. 
Walser,  Dr.,  25. 
Ward,  Mrs.  George,  69. 
Ward's  Island,  lunatic  asylum  on,  228, 

229,  230-231,  238. 
Waring,  George  E.,  Jr.,  correspondence 

between  Mrs  Lowell  and,  359. 
Washington,  Booker  T.,  remarks  on, 

471-473. 
Weidemeyer,  Mrs.,  320. 
Westchester  County  Poorhouse,  report 

on,  296. 
West  Roxbury,  residence  of  the  Shaw 

family  at,  2. 
"  What  Can  Young   Men  do  for  the 

City?"  paper  on,  422-435. 
White,  Amy,  64-65. 
White,  William  Howard,  17,  20,  64. 
Widows    with    small    children,    model 

tenements  for,  proposed,  473-474. 
Wilbur,  Dr.  H.  B.,  116,  119-120. 
Willard,  Dr.,  78. 
Willard  Asylum,  the,  78  n. 
Winthrop,   Theodore,   4,   13,   29,  476, 

477. 
Winthrop,  William,  19. 


Wister,  Mrs.,  65. 

Woman's  Central  Association  of  Relief 
for  the  Army  and  Navy,  8. 

Woman's  Municipal  League  of  the 
City  of  New  York,  416  ff. 

"  Women,  Relation  of,  to  Good  Govern- 
ment," paper  on,  435-445. 

Women,  the  matter  of  reformatories 
for,  88  ff.,  94,  95,  101,  306-319. 

Women  factory  inspectors,  335. 

Women's  Auxiliary  to  the  CivU  Service 
Reform  Association,  480-481. 

Women's  Prison  Association,  322. 

Women's  shelters,  451-452. 

Wood,  James,  313;    quoted,  314-316. 

Wood,  Dr.  James  R.,  84,  232. 

Woodbridge,  Alice,  report  by,  on  condi- 
tions of  working  women,  336. 

Woodin,  Senator.  230-231. 

Wood  yards,  135,  137. 

Working  Girls'  Clubs,  83. 

"Workingmen's  Rights  in  Property 
created  by  Them,"  paper  on,  390- 
394. 

Working  Women's  Society,  335;  for- 
mation of  the  Consumers'  League  by, 
337-339 ;  paper  on  labor  questions 
read  before,  372-380. 

Wylie,  Dr.  W.  Gill,  295. 

Young  men  and  what  they  can  do  for 
the  city,  Mrs.  Lowell's  paper  con- 
cerning, 422-435. 


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